Z is for Zzyzx
by Zubeneschamali
Summary: A bizarre case involving a crashed sports car, an abandoned gold mine, and a Mars rover put Charlie and Don in the path of danger in the Mojave Desert.
1. Prologue

Title: Z is for Zzyzx  
Author: Zubeneschamali  
Rating: T (language, violence)  
Summary: A bizarre case involving a crashed sports car, an abandoned gold mine, and a Mars rover put Charlie and Don in the path of danger in the Mojave Desert.  
Disclaimer: These characters so totally do not belong to me. Or are, like, making me any money or anything. As if!  
Author's note: This story is inspired by real events, but not strictly based on them. Thanks to rittenden, brainstormer and researcher extraordinaire.

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Prologue  
June 2, 2006  
4:25 A.M.  
Interstate 15, Milepost 241

"On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair…"

Rick Winters raised his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn, then reached over to turn up the volume on the big rig's satellite radio. This used to be one of his least favorite stretches of highway, between Las Vegas and Barstow, back when he had nothing but hissing static on the radio. He checked the gas gauge, then cast his eyes back to the empty highway before him. Eighty-five miles to Barstow, then 130 to Long Beach, where he'd pick up his container of televisions or t-shirts or blue jeans, depending on what was on the schedule, and carry them back to Topeka. Another day, another seven hundred miles.

The Mojave Desert stretched out on either side of him, an expanse of mountains, rock, and scrub only barely lit by the full moon overhead. He'd seen the view hundreds of times by daylight, and it wasn't any more attractive when you could actually see it, even though the mountains were at least more interesting than the flat plains of the Midwest. Still, it was dry and barren, not good for much but driving through as fast as you could.

Headlights flashed in his side mirror, and a CHP car rolled past. He instinctively checked the speedometer, although he knew the cruise control was set at 78. They wouldn't nab you unless you were at least ten miles over, certainly not in the middle of the night when you were just about the only vehicle on the road. He watched as the patrol car passed on ahead, the distance to its red taillights slowly increasing as they both drove along.

Traffic in the other direction was even lighter. You'd have to have been leaving San Bernardino at two in the morning, or L.A. at one, to be out on this particular stretch of road at this time. The few vehicles that had passed him were either trying to get to the sprawl of L.A. before rush hour started, like he was, or were heading home after a late night in Vegas. He'd tried the casinos once or twice himself, years ago when Vegas was the only place outside of Atlantic City where you could try your hand at a game of chance. He'd lost a week's salary in a matter of hours and had never gone back.

He checked the side mirror again and saw a pair of headlights coming up fast. He looked more closely. Really, really fast. In just a matter of seconds, they would be passing him.

Sure enough, it was only a few heartbeats later that he heard a roar from the roadway down to his left, through the open window of the cab. A car zoomed by so quickly he could barely believe it. His headlights picked out only a flash of dark blue as the vehicle flew past him, the taillights receding into the distance before he could blink.

"Damn," Rick muttered, reaching for his cell phone. He wasn't one to tattle on other folks, especially when it came to going a little faster than the CHP might like, but this was actually dangerous. It was hard to be certain in the dark, but based on how fast the blue car pulled away, it must have been going well over one hundred miles per hour. Coming up on a vehicle with a burnt-out bulb or mud over its taillights that was actually going the speed limit would be like hitting a wall at over thirty miles an hour. Not good.

Then he faintly heard the piercing sound of the siren on the patrol car ahead of him, and he grinned. "Never mind," he muttered, replacing the cell in its holder. Probably some rich kid from Beverly Hills who'd lost too much of Daddy's money tonight and was trying to reclaim his manhood by pushing down on the accelerator as hard as he could. Idiot. He'd seen a few wrecks along this stretch of road, guys who thought that just because the road was mostly straight and level, there were no consequences if they lost control of their vehicle. They tended to forget about things like oncoming traffic. And the patrol cars that traveled up and down along this lonely desert highway, even in the middle of the night.

"Welcome to the Hotel California," came the chorus for the third time. Great song, especially the guitar work at the end. He reached over to adjust the volume again, then froze with his hand on the knob when he heard something up ahead that made his blood run cold. There was a harsh, high-pitched squeal of tires suddenly being forced to stop their rapid rotation, no doubt leaving thick, black marks across the concrete pavement. Then there was the inevitable crash, signaled by the screeching, twisting sound of metal moving in ways it wasn't designed to do. He closed his eyes for a second, not wanting to think about what he was going to see in a few minutes when he came across the site, hoping that at least the CHP car hadn't been involved.

Inevitably, the wheels of his own vehicle carried him ever closer, and in the space of a minute, his headlights illuminated the first exit sign in many miles. Or at least, what was left of the exit sign. It was listing heavily towards the road, the nearest support pole missing and the sign itself heavily damaged. He eased on the brakes, ready to pull over to the side of the road and deliver any help that he could with his first-aid training, although he figured the CHP could deal with whatever was left of the poor bastard who had been in that car as well as he could. The highway patrol car was sitting by the side of the road, headlights illuminating the remains of the exit sign. At least those guys were all right.

Rick saw the letters "Rd" on the sign, then realized it was only the right half that was still there. The sign itself had been torn in two, the other half probably lying wherever the blue car had come to rest. He shook his head as his truck came to a stop on the shoulder behind the patrol car. What a mess this was going to be.

He grabbed the first aid kit and flashlight from the cab and hopped down onto the shoulder. There was one figure in the patrol car, and he could see the beam of a flashlight wavering back and forth well off the road, where his partner was apparently looking for the wreck. Then he saw a large object right on the edge of the right-hand lane, with two red lights on the back. Walking past the patrol car, he shone his own flashlight on the object. Then he drew in a sharp breath.

It was a dark blue, high-performance sports car. A Lotus something; he remembered his son going on and on about something like it on a TV show they'd seen a couple of weeks ago. It was definitely the car that had passed him. But it was only the back half of the car. The vehicle had been split in two by the force of the wreck, and the front half was nowhere to be seen.

"Sir!" The sharp voice came from behind him, and he whirled around to see the patrolman out of his car, then blinked in the light that was trained on him.

"Just offering help if you need it," he said, carefully keeping his hands away from his sides as he spoke. "I got a first aid kit here."

"Well, I doubt that's going to matter much, but I appreciate the gesture." The flashlight was lowered, and Rick waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. "You the trucker we just passed?"

"Yeah, that's me." He gestured back at the decapitated vehicle. "How fast was he going, anyway?"

He could see the patrolman shake his head. "We couldn't keep up, and Jeff was pushing 120. He was drawing away from us like nothing."

"Damn." He opened his mouth to say more, but there was a shout from off in the distance, well off the road.

"Hey, Todd! Call for paramedics, then bring the first aid kit!"

Rick didn't wait for instruction, but turned and sprinted away from the interstate, his legs a little sluggish after sitting in the cab for over three hours, towards the small beam of flashlight he could see in the distance. He stumbled a little on the rocky ground, then topped a slight incline, expecting to see the patrolman sitting on the ground with a twisted ankle or something. What he saw made him stumble again, then come to a complete stop.

It was nearly indistinguishable from a random pile of twisted metal, but the front half of the Lotus was pointing back towards the highway, the windshield shattered and the driver's door bent outwards at an odd angle. That, he had expected. What had shocked him was the young woman standing next to the shattered wreck, the patrolman holding her elbow solicitously while she put her hand to her head and then straightened up. "I'm fine," he heard her say as he approached. "Thank you so much."

"You were in that?" Rick asked, stunned. Then he remembered why he was there and opened up the first aid kit, saying to the patrolman, "I was driving along and heard the wreck, thought I could help."

"Thanks," the other man said. "Looks like a miracle, doesn't it?"

He nodded in agreement as he pulled out an antiseptic wipe and a gauze pad, having seen a small cut on the woman's forehead. "You're pretty damn lucky, Miss, driving like you were." She was wearing a tight little black number that made Rick wish he was about twenty years younger and an unmarried man. At the edge of his flashlight's beam, he could see from the expression on the patrolman's face, who _was_ about twenty years younger, that he was similarly aware of the young lady's appearance.

She shook her head sharply, then put a hand to her temple underneath a curtain of dark blond hair with a wince. "I wasn't driving," she said faintly. Then, more clearly, she added, "I was kidnapped. He forced me into the car in Las Vegas, and he was the one driving. He escaped when the car crashed, and I don't know where he went. I'm just glad he left me here." She repeated more softly, "I'm so glad."

Rick and the patrolman looked at each other. Then, as they both realized the implications of what she had said, their eyes swept the darkness around them. Was there someone else out there who needed assistance? Or was there someone else out there who wished the young woman, and maybe themselves, some kind of harm?

"We'd better get you back to the road," the patrolman said hurriedly. "Sir, can you give us a hand and hold the flashlight?"

They hurried back to the relative safety of the road shoulder. Off in the distance, Rick could hear the siren indicating that paramedics were on their way. He had to fight the urge to keep looking back over his shoulder for the unknown driver who had apparently climbed out of the wreck as unharmed as his victim had been. When they were within shouting distance, the patrolman with him called, "Hey, Todd! Get on the horn to dispatch and put us through to the FBI. Looks like we've got a kidnapping here."

"What?" The young patrolman had questions all over his face as he looked at the three people making their way towards him, but he reached inside the car for the radio without verbalizing any of them. He depressed a button on the radio, then paused. "Where are we, anyway?"

Rick recalled the flash of bright green metal under his flashlight beam out near where the girl had been, and the strange name he had seen the other half of the sign. He remembered it now, one of the few exits on the long stretch between Barstow and Las Vegas with no services of any kind. Truckers tended to remember those kinds of things.

"Zzyzx," he called out to the CHP officer, pronouncing it to rhyme with "Isaacs." "We're at the exit for Zzyzx Road."


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer, etc., with the prologue.

Wow, I didn't expect so many reviews for a chapter with no actual NUMB3RS characters in it. Hope you like this one even better!

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Chapter 1  
June 2, 2006  
10:45 A.M.  
Road to the Desert Studies Center, Zzyzx, CA

"California rest in peace, simultaneous release, California show your teeth, she's my priestess, I'm your priest…"

Larry's voice cut through the chorus. "Charles, your driving would be more effective if you closed at least one of your hands around the steering wheel. And I find myself having to agree with Amita's assessment of your singing."

Charlie glanced over at his physicist friend, but he laid down his imaginary drumsticks and obediently placed his hands at ten and four on the wheel. "Larry, we're going less than twenty miles an hour. There's no one else for at least two miles in any direction, and I would be hard put to tell the difference if we actually went off the road." The gravel-topped track they were following ever since turning off the interstate had been described as a "washboard" surface by the Desert Studies Center's website. Boy, did they have that right. "And what's Amita's assessment of my singing, anyway?"

"I believe the phrase 'Don't quit your day job' is more than apropos." Larry winced as the Honda Accord struck a particularly rough pothole. "I'm also wondering if a more rugged rental vehicle would have served us better here. Harold was right to insist I not take my own pride and joy out here."

The thought of Larry's valuable car bouncing along the rutted gravel was enough to make Charlie wince. Or maybe it was because his head had nearly hit the roof of the car with another sudden jolt. "How much farther is it, anyway?"

On the CD player, the Red Hot Chili Peppers burst into a cacophony of guitar music, and Charlie hurriedly reached over to adjust the volume. They'd been operating under the rule of "driver picks" when it came to the music on their three-hour journey, and although Larry had been more than tolerant of his selections, he didn't want to push his luck. Besides, the last time he'd listened to this particular song, the rhythm of the guitar solo had led to a small breakthrough on his cognitive emergence theory, and he didn't want to get distracted by mathematical formulae while driving. Not that anyone was likely to revoke his license out here in the middle of the Mojave Desert, but still, better safe than sorry.

"According to the directions, and at our current pace, approximately another fifteen minutes. And not a moment too soon." Larry shifted in his seat. "Next time, I will heed your advice about using the facilities when the opportunity presents itself."

Charlie bit back a smile. "Guess you never took road trips as a kid, huh?"

"Only to visit relatives, and then only within a relatively short radius of home." He grabbed the dashboard as Charlie swerved to avoid a rock the size of a football. "I'm also beginning to understand why you refrained from the second cup of coffee at breakfast."

"We'll be there in a minute, Larry," he said reassuringly. Then, "Hey, do you see something on the horizon?" If he squinted against the sunlight, he thought he could make out some white shapes off in the distance, probably the buildings of the research center they were headed towards. Either that, or a mirage. He'd have to ask one of the scientists out here if such things really existed, or if they were just plot devices in the movies.

"I'm also gaining an appreciation of the difficulty of the task before us." The car jolted over another dip in the road, and Larry went on, "If our vehicle is having such difficulties maneuvering when there is a sentient being behind the wheel, it's not surprising our friend is experiencing significant trouble."

"Our friend, as you put it, is also going a lot slower than twenty miles an hour." He twisted the wheel to avoid another piece of rock too big to drive over. "Although even an Accord has better clearance than she does."

He looked off into the distance again. Definitely not a mirage. There was a small cluster of white buildings, and a series of dark vertical lines in front of them that would probably resolve themselves into palm trees as they drew closer. "Someone's supposed to be meeting us here, right?"

"Yes, my colleague, Harold Zorbin, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He's the one who requested my assistance and agreed that you would be a valuable addition to the team as well."

Charlie slowed to a crawl to go over a series of bumps. "I'm still not sure if I can really help the Mars rover, but I'm honored to have the opportunity." He hit the accelerator again, and they lurched forward the last several yards, pulling to a halt in front of a long, low, white mission-style building with palm trees across the front.

"Well, I'm sure Harold will explain everything. If he's here, that is."

Charlie squinted out across the small compound, the buildings shimmering in the late morning heat. Behind the main building, a flat expanse of white stretched away, a dried-up lakebed covered with encrusted salts. Two cars were parked at the main building, a beat-up yellow Mustang and a black pickup, but there was no sign of anyone. Then again, considering how warm it was outside, there was no reason for anyone to be hanging around outside awaiting their arrival. He turned off the ignition and they sat there for a moment, letting the car engine cool. "Shall we go in?"

Inside the building, it was blessedly cool. A short, white-haired man sat behind a counter just inside the door, leafing through what Charlie recognized from the photo on the front as yesterday's L.A. Times. He looked up as they entered, then folded the paper on the desk and stood up. "You must be the CalSci folks," he said, extending a hand. "Name's Wilson Terrell. I'm the manager of this place."

Charlie shook his proffered hand, noticing the man's strong grip. "I'm Charlie Eppes, and this is Larry Fleinhardt. We're supposed to be meeting Harold Zorbin?"

Wilson shook his head. "The JPL folks have been out in the field since dawn, but they should be coming in soon. The sun just gets too hot, so they tend to work Spanish-style, taking a siesta in the middle of the day. I can show you around in the meantime, though."

"That would be great." Charlie cast a glance at Larry, who had a distinctly uncomfortable look on his face. "Would you mind starting with the location of the washroom?"

Ten minutes later, Wilson was leading them across the dusty ground to the building across the open square. "So, boys, welcome to the Hotel California." When Charlie and Larry exchanged a look, the other man chuckled. "I just love sayin' that. But seriously, welcome to the Desert Studies Center at Zzyzx."

"Where did that crazy name come from, anyway?" Charlie asked. "I'm not a linguist, but it doesn't sound like any language I've ever heard of."

"Well, it's not like any language, because it's completely made up," Wilson explained as they trudged across the dirt parking lot. "We're here because a man named Curtis Howe Springer decided to build a health spa around a series of mineral springs he found out here." He gestured towards the lake bed and went on, "He wanted a catchy name for the place, so he made up a name that he figured would be the last one alphabetically, and thus Zzyzx was born."

"Is it?" Larry inquired as he wiped his brow. "The last name, I mean."

"It's the last place name in the U.S.'s official list, yeah. 'Course, there's not exactly much here in terms of a 'place,' as you can see. After Springer cheated one too many people with his 'miracle cures' from the spring water he bottled and sold, the IRS got on his tail and forced him to sell his property to the government. Some years later, a bunch of universities got together and decided to turn it into the Desert Research Center, and that's where we are today."

Charlie squinted at the whitewashed building ahead of them. "What kind of research goes on here?"

"A little bit of everything. A fair bit of geology, some ecology and biology, even a bit of archaeology. Then there's you and your JPL folks; they told me the terrain is so similar to the surface of Mars, they decided to test the rovers here before sending them up." Wilson paused and looked at them. "And you're out here to troubleshoot them, is that right?"

Larry nodded. "Unfortunately, the Spirit rover appears to have run into an obstacle which she is unable to maneuver around, so my colleagues are using the prototype rover to model the situation. Charles here is our finest applied mathematician on campus, and it was thought he could provide some additional insight in terms of the equations and modeling necessary to surmount the obstacle in question."

"I just hope I'm able to help," Charlie said modestly, though inside he was still amazed that he was consulting for NASA. As a child, even though he had never really harbored the desire to go into space himself, he had been fascinated with the Space Shuttle program. The Challenger disaster had devastated him, and he remembered his ten-year-old self trying to get his private tutor to explain how such a thing could happen. Not in terms of cosmic meaning or significance, but in mathematical terms. It had been one of the first events that pointed him towards applied mathematics, towards the idea of using the mental gifts he'd been given not just to make the world a better place, but to save people's lives. So it gave him a thrill now to be working for the agency that had been part of his childhood dream.

"Well, like I said, Harold and the rest should be back within the hour," Wilson said. "These are the two cars they came in with, but they're out using a Jeep for the fieldwork. Now, this is the dormitory for the Center," he said, pointing to the low-slung white building they were approaching. "There aren't a lot of people working here this week, so you'll have most of the place to yourselves. I've put you in a room down the hall from the rest of your team." He handed each of them a single key and said, "We don't have a lock on the building itself, and we usually don't lock the rooms, either, but if you'd like to, here you go. We try to keep the AC as low as possible to save energy, and we usually open the windows at night once it cools off. It's not like there's a lot of traffic noise to disturb your sleep."

"Indeed," Larry said, accepting the key. "Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Terrell."

"Please, it's Wilson. Just pop on over if you need anything. I do a run into town a couple of times a week, so just let me know if there's any kind of supplies you need. How long you boys here for, anyway?"

"As long as it takes," Charlie responded. When Wilson's eyebrows went up, he continued, "Well, inside of three weeks, that is. Any longer than that, and they're planning on rerouting Spirit a different way."

"Well, then, I wish you luck!" And with a wave, the older man headed back across the dusty courtyard to his air-conditioned comfort.

Charlie and Larry grabbed their packs from the rental car and went inside the dormitory building, following the numbers tacked on the doors inside. "Room Ten, right?" Charlie put a hand on the doorknob and swung it open. He took a step inside, Larry behind him, and then stopped in his tracks.

Inside, it looked like a standard dormitory room: four twin beds, one in each corner of the room, along with two slightly battered chests of drawers, two scratched-up desks, and the navy plaid curtains on the windows drawn tightly against the desert sun. That much, he had expected.

What he hadn't expected was the young man lying on one of those beds, curled on his side to face them. His eyes were closed, but when Charlie entered the room, he gave a start and bolted upright, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He was dressed oddly for their surroundings, in a pair of black pants and a long-sleeved maroon shirt in some sort of shiny material that would have been more in place at a nightclub than here in the middle of the desert.

But it wasn't the man's clothing that caught Charlie's attention so much as the black eye he sported and the series of small cuts he could see on the backs of his hands. That, and the initial look of sheer terror on his face that faded into something more wary as he watched them in the doorway.

"I'm sorry," Charlie started, looking down at the key in his hand. No, the tiny piece of paper taped to the key did say "10," and that was the room he had entered. He thought Wilson said they would have the room to themselves, however. "I didn't think anyone was in here."

"I didn't know anyone would be here, either." The guy couldn't have been older than most of Charlie's students, maybe twenty-one if he was lucky. His voice was slightly accented, something Eastern European, Charlie thought. "I'm sorry," he said, rising to his feet a bit unsteadily. "I will go and find another room."

Charlie exchanged a curious glance with Larry, who had pushed his way into the room behind him. "Didn't Mr. Terrell assign you a room when you arrived?" he asked slowly.

"I just…" He hesitated for a moment, the dark fringe of his bangs nearly hiding his eyes and making it hard to read his expression. "I think I should go."

"Where?" Larry spoke up for the first time. "If you didn't drive here, then how did you arrive, and where would you go?"

"I walked," came the hesitant reply. His eyes were shifting back and forth between the two of them, and Charlie thought he looked like a trapped animal trying to find a way out. "From the highway."

Charlie looked at him in disbelief. "That's four miles away. In this heat?"

The man shook his head. "Early this morning. It was before the sun came up."

Charlie's initial concern about who this guy was and what he might be doing there had been replaced by a concern for the guy himself. He didn't look very steady on his feet, and the look on his face made it clear that he was more worried about harm to himself than harming them. He let his bag slide to the floor and took a slow step forward. "What's your name?" he asked quietly. "What happened to you?"

"Dominic Koristet." He looked at Charlie for a moment, as if measuring him, and then went on, "I was in a car accident."

"Well, shouldn't we report that to the police?" Larry asked, also stepping forward.

"No!" The young man's voice took on a note of panic as he backed towards the wall. "Please, no. I don't want anyone to know where I am. They'll come after me again."

An uneasy feeling settled in Charlie's stomach. "What do you mean, 'they'?" he asked. "Who's after you?" When Dominic didn't instantly respond, he went on, "If you don't want to talk to the police, my brother's an FBI agent. I trust him completely, and I assure you he can keep you safe. I've worked with him on a lot of cases, and he's really great at his job. He can help you."

Dominic was shaking his head. "I don't trust anyone in law enforcement. When I was a child, my father told me stories about the police turning people in to the government, and now they work hand in hand with the, what do you call it, the mob. The Mafia." He shook his head more firmly. "I have to go," he said, his gaze flickering past Charlie to the open door at his back.

"You need help!" Larry insisted. "Medical attention for your injuries, and some kind of legal assistance for your predicament. I understand your hesitation, but I can assure you, the United States is not the Czech Republic."

Charlie turned to stare at his friend as Dominic asked in an astounded tone that nevertheless made it clear Larry was right, "What makes you think I come from the Czech Republic?"

Larry waved one hand. "I have some ancestry from that region myself, and your surname is familiar. What matters, Mr. Koristet, is that you can trust us, and you can trust Don, Charlie's brother, absolutely."

Dominic regarded Larry for a moment longer, and then sat back down on the small bed. "I was kidnapped," he said quietly, ignoring their hushed gasps. "Last night, or maybe it was this morning, they took me from my father's house near Las Vegas. There was an accident on the highway, and I got away from the person who had taken me. I got off the road as quickly as I could, and I was lucky to find this place."

"You're damn right you were lucky," Larry said, coming forward to look at Dominic more closely. "You could have ended up lost in the Mojave Desert in the middle of the summer. Well, early summer, at any rate. Nevertheless, will you let us assist you?"

Dominic's eyes flickered back and forth between the two of them, settling on Charlie. Finally he said, "All right. But only because it doesn't appear I have anywhere else to go."

"Okay." Charlie pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and flipped it open. He groaned when he saw the "No Signal" announcement on the screen. "Why am I not surprised?" he muttered. The place with the last name in the alphabet was probably a little too remote to get the kind of cell coverage he was accustomed to.

Larry had dug his phone out of his pack, and in a moment he was shaking his head, too. "We'll have to ask Wilson to place a call from his office."

"You stay here, okay?" Charlie asked Dominic, although he was sure he wasn't going to get any argument on that front. "We'll be right back."

The young man laid back down on the bed, wincing as he did so. "I will wait," he said quietly.

Charlie hurried out the door, Larry close at his heels, eager to get hold of his brother and pass this strange situation off to him. "Do you suppose we should tell Wilson?" Charlie asked in a low tone as they hurried across the sun-baked dirt.

Larry had an unhappy expression on his face. "I don't want to withhold information from the caretaker of this place, and it's not like we can hide the boy for very long with no one noticing his existence. But should someone come here to inquire about him, it's probably for the best if no one else is aware of his presence."

"That's what I was thinking, too." Charlie gave a short sigh. "Hopefully Wilson won't mind if I ask for a little privacy on the phone."

In the end, it didn't matter, since the only connection Charlie was able to make was to Don's voice mail. He left the number of the Desert Studies Center and asked Wilson to be sure to notify him if there were any calls. Then he and Larry headed back to the dormitory, minds already racing to figure out how to explain their uninvited guest's presence at the Center.

Neither of them wanted to consider the possibility that the kidnapper Dominic had mentioned could prove to be another uninvited guest before too long.


	3. Chapter 2

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Chapter 2  
June 2, 2006  
4:50 P.M.  
Interstate 15, Cajon Pass

"The West Coast has the sunshine, and the girls all get so tan…"

Don impatiently snapped off the radio. "And they're all on the freeway in front of us," he muttered, settling back to glare at the traffic in front of the Suburban.

In the driver's seat, Colby chuckled. "That's what the siren's for, boss. We can be around all of these cars if you just say the word."

He shook his head. "Not going up the pass like this. With my luck, there'd be a semi stalled on the shoulder somewhere. Besides, we're meeting with the local field officer, not en route to a crime scene."

The FBI's Los Angeles field office had a relatively large number of branch offices because of the size of the population in the jurisdiction. When the call had come in that morning about a possible kidnapping across state lines, the caller had been rerouted to the field office in Victorville, located halfway between Barstow and greater L.A. But some detail of the case had led the Victorville agent to call on his colleagues downtown, and so Don was on his way with the only member of his team who hadn't already left for the weekend.

"Where are all of these people going, anyway?" Colby eased on the brakes as a host of red taillights blossomed in front of them. "I didn't think there was anything north of San Bernardino except a few small towns."

"More like a few medium towns. And anyway, most of these people are going out for the weekend. It's Friday night; they're all hoping to get lucky in Vegas."

"One way or another," Colby murmured under his breath.

The corner of Don's mouth quirked up, but he didn't make a reply. Instead he reached for his cell phone and checked again to see if there were any messages from Charlie. His brother had left a message with him earlier in the day about possibly needing his help with something, but he had been very vague about precisely what it was. Don had returned the call as soon as he got it, but he still hadn't heard back, three hours later. He shrugged and returned the phone to his pocket. He'd hear from Charlie sooner or later.

Half an hour later, they pulled off the freeway and onto the dusty suburban streets of Victorville. Up in the high desert, it was rapidly becoming a bedroom community for Greater Los Angeles, and the familiar set of big box stores and fast-food restaurants greeted them as they drove along. They rolled into the parking lot only half an hour behind schedule, and though they'd called the agent on duty to let them know, Don was still annoyed. Besides the fact that he hated being late as a matter of professional responsibility, he estimated that now they wouldn't be back to L.A. until at least 7 P.M. And every minute past six was a minute he was supposed to be spending with Robin Brooks, at dinner and whatever came after. He sighed as he shut the door to the SUV. Even if he followed his father's suggestion and really tried to make it work with her, his schedule would inevitably screw it up.

So it was with a more brusque manner than usual that Don introduced himself and Colby to the local agent, a Hispanic man named Roger Castillo. "Thanks for coming all the way out here at this time of day," Roger said after shaking their hands and ushering them to a pair of olive-colored vinyl chairs in his tiny particle-board-paneled office. "Let me get you up to speed, and then you can talk to Ms. Zadera before we give her a ride home."

"That's our victim, right?" Don asked.

"That's right." Roger nodded towards the glass panel on one side of his office, through which they saw a young woman with long, dark blond hair sitting on a cracked leather sofa and reading a magazine. She was wearing a tight, low-cut black dress that accentuated a fine figure. Colby let out a low whistle, and Don shot him a quick look. Colby held up a hand apologetically, and Don nodded to Castillo to continue.

"She's damn lucky to be alive, considering the condition the car was in. I find it really hard to believe two people walked away from this, but the Highway Patrol guys who were on the scene swear it's true." He handed over a photo of the car wreck, and Don and Colby both winced. "It's a Lotus Exige, a high-performance sports car, and that's the only thing that saved them. It's built to racecar standards, so even when the car split in two after hitting the exit sign, both passengers walked away. Or ran away, as the case may be with our suspect."

"How fast was it going?" Don asked, staring at the picture of the mangled vehicle.

"The speedometer's stuck at 160, but it might have been going even faster." Colby whistled again, and this time Don nodded in agreement.

"So, that sounds like just a bizarre traffic accident, right?" When the two L.A. agents nodded, he went on, "But then there's Ms. Zadera. I faxed part of her statement to you, but here's the rest of it." He held up a small tape recorder. "Our transcriptionist had to go home at noon, so we only got the first hour printed out. But it's definitely something bigger than what we usually deal with out here."

"What makes you say that?" said Colby. "An alleged kidnapping sounds pretty straightforward."

Castillo shook his head. "Not when the purported kidnapper has diplomatic immunity." Don grimaced, and the other man nodded. "Makes it a little trickier, yes?"

"How do you know?" Don asked. "Did she give you a name?"

"That, and the gun we found in the car had fingerprints matching the same name." Castillo handed a file over his desk with the air of someone glad to be rid of a difficult problem. "He's a Czech national; his father is based out of the consulate here in L.A., so he's got immunity by virtue of being a family member. Name's Dominic Koristet."

The file folder only had two pieces of paper in it: one, a copy of Mr. Koristet's official paperwork from the Department of State, and two, his current address and contact information, along with a list of a few other people's addresses and phone numbers. "He lives in Vegas?"

"That's what the information says, though I imagine a jet-setter like that lives all over the place." Seeing Don's puzzled look, he went on, "I made a few inquiries. His dad's not the ambassador or anything, just a consular official, but he's got quite the network of connections, both here and back home. He's a pretty rich industrialist who helped fund the Velvet Revolution that split Czechoslovakia in two. Not sure that all the money is from regular business transactions, if you know what I mean. Sounds like the son gets to play around with Dad's money in lieu of going to college like anyone else his age."

"Uh huh." Don studied the photograph, seeing a young man with short, dark hair and a proud way of carrying himself. "And who's Ms. Zadera?"

He reached for another piece of paper in the file. "Michelle Zadera is twenty-three years old, lives in Alhambra, and works for something called the Crescenta Valley Transit Authority as a security officer."

"A transit cop?" Colby's gaze wandered over to the woman as he spoke in a disbelieving tone.

"That's what she says, but I've never heard of this transit authority. So that's kind of odd. And then there's the DHS guys who were at the scene before I got there. No one seems to know who they are or what they wanted, and I can't seem to get a hold of them."

"Wait, Homeland Security is part of this?" Don's brow creased. "Why?"

"That would be reason number two I gave you a call." Castillo spread his hands wide. "When I say 'we' in this office, I mean me and the secretary who works 30 hours a week. Something bigger than a local inquiry comes up, I gotta hand it off to an office with more manpower. And this is not a local inquiry."

"Yeah, I can see that," Don muttered, looking back at the photo of the smashed Lotus. "How much of this has made it into the press?"

Castillo leaned back in his chair as it creaked under the strain. "So far, only the high-speed car crash on I-15. Kind of a wacky-but-true story, a 160-mile-an-hour crash with only minor injuries. Anything beyond that, me and the CHP have kept to ourselves."

"Good," Don replied. "We're gonna try and keep it that way, right?"

"No problem." Castillo spread his hands again. "I'd like to transfer out of this office someday, you know?"

"Yeah, I hear you." Don nodded towards Michelle Zadera. "We'd like to ask her a few questions."

"You can head out if you want," Colby interjected. "Alhambra's on our way back into town; we can make sure she gets home okay."

Castillo's glance flicked to the young woman, and Don had to bite back a smile. Looks like Colby wasn't the only one to appreciate her appearance. "Does that mean you're not going to take a look at the scene or talk to the CHP guys who are conducting the search?" the other agent asked. "It's only another hour up the road, now that you're here. Beats making the trip again."

Colby's face fell, and Don felt his own spirits dropping. Looked like he was going to be placing a call to a certain district attorney to cancel some dinner plans. "He's right, Colby. I'm not any more keen on taking on that traffic than you are, but since we're here…"

"Traffic won't be as bad once you're through the valley here. Then it's just the folks headed to Vegas, not the ones heading home from work." Castillo rose from his seat. "I really appreciate this, agents. I know you guys must have dozens of cases you're working on at a time, but this is really out of my league."

"Hey, no problem. Like you said, there's more to this than meets the eye." He hefted the file in his hand. "I assume the CHP officers' names are in here?"

"Them and the truck driver who stopped to assist at the scene." Castillo ushered them out of his office and said in a low tone, "Whatever that guy was expecting to see at a horrific crash site, she wasn't it."

As they approached, Michelle Zadera looked up and gave them a warm smile, rising gracefully and extending her hand. "You're the agents from the Los Angeles office that Roger was telling me would come?"

"That's right," Don said, shaking her hand firmly. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was stronger than he would have expected for someone who appeared so delicate. "I'm Don Eppes, and this is Colby Granger."

"Ma'am," Colby said in a low voice, leaning forward to shake her hand. Don swore that if Colby had been wearing a hat, he would have tipped it as if he was in a Western.

A faint blush stained Michelle's cheeks, contrasting with her ivory skin. Don successfully kept from rolling his eyes, although it took some effort. Attractive as this woman was, the only one he wanted to be looking at right now was taller and with darker hair, and it was increasingly less and less likely that was going to happen tonight. "I know you already gave Agent Castillo your statement, but we'd like to ask you a couple of more questions, if that's all right."

She looked up at him, her dark brown eyes wide. "Of course. Anything to help you catch that awful man. It's just—" she hesitated and leaned slightly forward. "This won't take long, will it? I've been wearing the same clothing for a day and a half now, and I'd really appreciate the chance to go home and clean up. I'm sure I must look a fright."

"Ms. Zadera, I wouldn't worry about that." Colby's admiring tone caused her to look down demurely.

"Please, call me Michelle," she said, giving him the same coquettish look she had just tried on Don. On Colby, it seemed to be more effective.

So Don let his junior agent take the lead, and he was pleased that Colby did ask nearly all of the questions he would have himself, if with more warm smiles and a gentler tone of voice. Then again, this woman had been through a traumatic experience and was actually pretty lucky to be alive. Treating her gently was not at all out of line.

After about twenty minutes, Colby said, "Well, that's all for now, Ms. Zadera." She raised an eyebrow, and Colby corrected himself. "Michelle. Agent Castillo will be taking you home, but we'll be in touch if we have any more questions."

"Of course," she replied, leaning forward and laying a hand on his arm. "As I told you before, anything I can do to help. Anything."

The two agents walked back out to the Suburban, Don having gotten directions from Castillo as to exactly where to go on I-15. He had said the wreck was still on the side of the road, though you wouldn't see it from the way they would be approaching until they'd already passed it. They'd have to get off at the Zzyzx Road exit, ten miles short of the small town of Baker, and cross the freeway there.

"So," Don said once they were in the Suburban and headed back towards the interstate. He was driving, and he was relieved to see that traffic was, in fact, much better than it had been. His tone was deliberately light as he asked, "Were you interviewing our witness or trying to get a date with her?"

"Come on, Don, don't tell me you've never done that." Colby's tone was slightly disbelieving.

"Hit on a kidnapping victim? No, I can't say that I have." Now, hitting on a U.S Attorney was a different story, but Colby didn't need to hear the details of that.

"No, not that." Colby shifted in his seat so he was partially facing him. "Didn't you notice how thick she was laying it on? I mean, I'd like to think that I'm irresistible to a gorgeous woman like that, but the cynical side of me knows better."

"What do you mean?" Don maneuvered the vehicle around a slow-moving motor home and returned to the right-hand lane.

"She wasn't really answering our questions. She didn't tell us anything that wasn't already in the report, even when I asked something new." Colby gave a shrug. "I thought that playing along with the flirting thing would get us somewhere, but it looks like that was her deflection strategy instead."

Don looked at him for a second before returning his eyes to the road. "They don't teach you that in the Army, do they?"

He gave a small chuckle. "No, Megan told me about it. It's an interrogation method that takes advantage of the gender differences between the interviewer and interviewee. It could go the other way, too, if you had a female doing the questioning and a male subject."

"I thought you told me you didn't go for that psycho-babble stuff, as you put it."

"Aw, that was last year, Don." He gave another small shrug and looked out the window. "A guy can change his mind when he sees something that works on occasion, can't he?"

Don tried a slightly more probing tone. "So, you and Megan were discussing flirting?"

He couldn't quite see Colby's eyes behind his sunglasses, but he could imagine the glare they were emitting. "As an interrogation technique, yeah," came the measured response.

Biting back a grin, he decided to let the other agent off the hook. For now. "So tell me again what you think you learned by doing that with Ms. Zadera?"

"Well, nothing concrete, but…" Colby's voice trailed off, and when Don shot him a glance, he saw the other man's brow deeply furrowed. "She's hiding something. This transit agency, even if it's not made up, is kind of weird, and she totally dodged any questions I asked about it."

"No, we definitely have to explore that connection more." The phone in Don's pocket began to ring, and he fished it out and flipped it open. "Eppes."

"Hey, Don, it's me," came Robin's voice.

He grimaced. He had intended to call her before he and Colby got in the car, but it was obviously too late for that. "Uh, hi," he said.

"Listen, I really hate to do this, but I'm going to have to cancel dinner. I just got word that a case might be moving forward next week, and I'm going to have to put in a lot of work this weekend in case that happens. Such is the state of my life."

He gave a soft laugh. "As it turns out, I was just about to cancel on you." He looked sideways at Colby, who was doing his best to stare out the side window and ignore the conversation. "I got called away to something that's got me driving out to the middle of nowhere." 'When I'd rather be with you,' he added in his head, but didn't dare say out loud.

"Well, at least that makes me feel better," came her reply, and he smiled. "Can we try again next Friday?"

"That long?" he asked before he could help himself.

Her quiet chuckle echoed through the phone. "Not if this case comes through, but I'll keep you updated."

"I suppose that's all I can ask for. So, uh, good luck, and I'll talk to you later."

"Same with your case, Don. And I'm really sorry tonight didn't work out."

"Me too," he replied, unable to keep a little huskiness from his voice. "Talk to you later."

He flipped the phone closed and returned it to his pocket, half holding his breath while waiting for the inevitable question.

Instead, Colby's response was to read the road sign they were passing. "Ninety-five miles to Baker. Just my idea of a good time on a Friday night."

Don made no reply, but cast his eyes across the desert landscape around them as he reached to crank up the a/c, thinking that if Ms. Zoristet's kidnapper really had been wandering around here all day, they were more likely to find his remains than anything else.


	4. Chapter 3

Disclaimer 'n stuff in the prologue.

oooooooooooooo

Chapter 3  
June 3, 2006  
11:41 P.M.  
Desert Studies Center

"And all the vampires, walkin' through the valley, move west down Ventura Boulevard…"

The CD player clicked into silence as the Jeep came to a halt outside the dormitory, but Charlie kept humming along to Tom Petty in his head. Next to him, Larry was loosening his death grip on the roll bar and unpeeling himself from the vehicle's vinyl seats. The sun had been beating down on them for several hours, and he was more than ready to take a rest.

So far, things were going okay, at least on the desert front. He and Larry had spent the morning getting up to speed on the situation with the Mars rover, which basically entailed introductions to the rest of the team and a detailed description of how the Mojave Desert was and wasn't like the terrain of Mars.

They also heard exactly what the problem was up on the Red Planet: how the rover known as Spirit was stuck between a rock and a soft place, as Larry's friend Harold had put it. A relatively large boulder prevented it from moving forward, but a soft patch of sand that it had just barely managed to traverse lay right behind it. And sand from that patch appeared to have gotten somewhere in the mechanism that enabled the rover to turn sideways, so turning left or right to get out wasn't going to work, either.

Now Charlie's mind was spinning with ideas about how to model the rover's situation. He had been peppering the scientists with questions about friction, particle size, traction, and other variables that would affect Spirit's ability to move, and now he was ready to sit down in front of his laptop and get to work. He already had thought of a couple of avenues that might work, so it was just a matter of running the equations and seeing if they really were feasible.

He'd almost forgotten the presence of a third person in their dormitory room, although his thoughts had flickered to Dominic Koristet once or twice throughout the morning, wondering if he had been able to keep himself hidden as well as he had yesterday. He didn't think Wilson or anyone else came in to clean the rooms, but he hadn't thought to ask.

As he slammed the door of the Jeep shut, he heard his name being called. He turned to see Wilson crossing the dirt courtyard, and he swallowed. Had their guest been discovered? And if so, only by Wilson, or by someone more nefarious?

"Charlie!" The older man reached out a hand to pat his shoulder as he neared him. "I'm sorry I didn't get this to you yesterday, but it slipped my mind. You had a message from your brother."

He blinked. "Don called back yesterday?" All this time he'd been wondering what had been holding him up, wondering if maybe he should have made the message more urgent, or at least more specific. And now it turned out he was a victim of faulty memory.

"Yes, he did, but it was just before the mail arrived, and I got into a conversation with the mailman, and by the time he left, I had forgotten the message. I hope it wasn't terribly important."

Charlie bit back a grimace. "What did he have to say?" he asked instead.

Wilson handed over a small slip of paper. "Here it is. Let me know if you want to give him a call back."

"Will do," Charlie muttered, taking the piece of paper and turning away. "Thanks," he threw over his shoulder as he hurriedly read the message. There wasn't much to it, just Don saying that of course he could help Charlie out with whatever it was that he was worried about, and to give him a call back with more details.

Larry had reached the room before him, but waited until Charlie was there as well to open the door. They slipped in, Charlie biting back the urge to furtively glance around him before entering the room. They could always say Dominic was a student of one of theirs who had come along to help but wasn't feeling well enough to go out in the heat. They'd considered using that as an open excuse and taking him along with them in the field, but then decided that it was too risky. So Charlie had lent him a set of clothes—their height difference didn't matter so much with shorts and a t-shirt—and Larry had a spare pair of flip-flops he had brought to wear around the dormitory.

Dominic was sitting at one of the desks, reading the newspaper. "Hello," he said when they entered, opening the paper to a page and pointing to it. "Apparently I have made the paper, if only indirectly."

They crossed the room and read the three-paragraph story over his shoulder. "You were going 160?" Charlie exclaimed. "My God, you're lucky to be alive."

The young man nodded. "It was a good car. I'm sad it had to sacrifice its life for mine." He gave a quick smile. "It was brand new, too. Today was the first day I drove it." Then a shadow fell across his face. "That was where they took me from."

"It was a carjacking?" Larry asked, lowering himself onto the empty bed next to the desk.

Dominic nodded again. "My father likes to collect cars, and this one had just been delivered to our house. I thought I would, what do you say, take it for a spin? I drove around town for about an hour, and when I turned back onto my street, there was a car by the side of the road with a flat tire. This beautiful woman was standing by it, looking so helpless." He shook his head. "I pulled over and asked if I could help. Then she pointed a gun on me."

"That must have been terrifying," Larry said softly.

Dominic nodded and went on, "She told me she didn't want to hurt me, but she would if I didn't do what she said. She made me get back in the car and start driving."

"What did she want you to do?" Charlie asked quietly. At this point, he really needed to call Don, but the more information he had to tell him, the more productive the phone call would be.

"She just wanted me to drive. Told me to get on the freeway to Los Angeles and not stop until she told me." He paused and stared down at the photograph of the wrecked vehicle. "She made me drive faster and faster and said if I went at least 120, the police would not be able to catch us. So I did. Then I tried to take the gun from her, and we crashed."

Charlie wondered if police cars really were limited to 120, but instead he asked, "What do you think she wanted?"

"I don't know." Dominic hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't know."

Charlie exchanged a glance over the young man's head with Larry. Their guest clearly had something he wasn't telling them, but it would be the FBI's job to find out what it was. "All right," he said, laying a friendly hand on Dominic's shoulder. "I'm going to get a hold of my brother, and he'll take care of everything. Okay?" Dominic nodded, and Charlie gave his shoulder a pat before turning around and heading for the door.

He crossed the courtyard quickly, checking his cell phone out of curiosity. This time, he was surprised to find a faint signal. He walked around for a few minutes, trying to find the strongest signal he could in a spot that was shaded; the midday sun was terrible. Finally, he settled on a location behind the main building, in the shelter of some scrubby-looking trees. He dialed Don's number and waited.

"Hey, Charlie. Where are you?"

"Out in the middle of nowhere. How about you?" He shifted his cross-legged seat on the dusty ground.

"Oh, right, this is the week you're working on that Mars thing. How's that going?"

Charlie could hear a few voices in the background that sounded familiar. "So far, so good. Don, are you at your office?"

"Yeah, we got a case that's kind of bizarre and definitely high priority. I don't suppose you heard about that car crash on the 15?"

"Well, yeah, it's right up the road, and I saw it in the paper this morning." Wow, they were already on it. Well, that was a good thing. "So, did you catch the guy?" Dominic would be relieved to know they had, if that was the case.

"Not yet. Listen, I can't really say anything else, but just watch yourself up there, okay? There's a guy on the loose who's already kidnapped one woman, and we don't know what he might be capable of."

"Kidnapped a woman?" Charlie was glad he was already sitting down. "From where?" This couldn't be the same case, not with Dominic inside their dorm terrified of a woman who had taken _him_ at gunpoint.

"From Vegas, that's why the FBI is involved. You know, it might be best if you cleared out of there until we find him. Just how close are you to Zzyzx Road, anyway?"

He looked across the compound at the dusty trail stretching away to the north. _Closer than you want to know, big brother_. "What does your suspect look like? I mean, there's only a handful of people out here, so anyone would stand out, but we should still know what he looks like, right?"

"Yeah, okay. He's 5'10", short dark hair, well-built, or so says our victim. Name is Dominic Koristet."

Charlie's heart thudded against his chest. "What did your victim say happened?" Normally Don wouldn't give away so many details about a case, but since his little brother happened to be in the vicinity, maybe he'd be a little more open.

"She said this cute guy with a hot sports car flagged her down by the side of the road, asking to borrow her cell phone. Then he pulled a gun and made her ride with him. They crashed when she tried to take the gun away from him."

"Wow." His mind started racing, thinking of ways to warn Larry without alerting Dominic to what he'd learned. He opened his mouth to say, "Don, you'd better get out here right now." But then he thought of the expression on Dominic's face when they had first encountered him. It wasn't the expression of a kidnapper. It was the look of someone in fear of his life. Charlie had seen enough criminals and victims in the short time he'd been helping Don out to be able to tell the difference. At least he would like to think so.

But he was sure Don was far better at making that distinction than he was. So what did that say about the woman who had told her story to the FBI? And about the young man they were sheltering here?

"Yeah, uh, we'll keep an eye out," Charlie finally said. "Are you coming out this way to investigate?"

"Well, Colby and I were out there last night, but we'll probably be by again, yeah. I'll let you know when; we can meet up somewhere."

"Sure, Don. So, good luck."

"Thanks. Hey, what was it that you had to talk to me about anyway? Something to do with a case?"

He swallowed and thought rapidly. "No, uh, it was about the house. Dad's gone down to San Diego for the weekend, he left before me, and I couldn't remember if I had turned the a/c down or not. It's no big deal, but if you're in the neighborhood…"

"Yeah, I'll try to swing by. Take care, Charlie."

"You too." He pressed the "end" button on the phone and took a deep breath. What was he doing? He had just lied to an FBI agent about a criminal investigation. No, worse than that, he had just lied to his _brother_ about a case. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts. And he seemed to have gotten away with it, too.

He scrambled to his feet and strode back towards the dorm, trying to figure out what to do next. The best thing to do was to call Don back, tell him they'd run across the suspect, and let the FBI take over.

But when he suggested that to Dominic after telling him the whole story, the Czech shook his head firmly. "No," he said, rising to his feet. "If that's what you want to do, I will leave now. If they are on her side, not only will they not believe me, but I will not be safe in their custody. I am better off on my own."

"Here now, hold on," Larry said, standing up as well. "You can't go out in the middle of the day like this. And where are you going to go, anyway? If you return to the vicinity of the freeway, you're bound to run into people you don't wish to encounter, of one type or another. We can give you a ride in the evening, at least past the site of the crash."

Dominic had crossed the room to the pile of the clothing he had been wearing when he arrived, which had been neatly folded underneath his bed since he'd accepted Charlie's offer of more comfortable clothes. "No," he said again. "I can't believe they haven't come here to look already. I need to go in the other direction."

"There's nothing out there but desert!" Charlie exclaimed. "There's nowhere to go."

"That is why I need your car." The Czech sat down on the bed reached beneath it, lifting up the pair of pants as though he was looking for something in the pockets.

Charlie exchanged a stunned look with Larry. The older man spoke first. "Listen, we're certainly willing to offer assistance as necessary and feasible, but we can't simply strand ourselves here by giving away our vehicle."

"I am sorry. I am taking terrible advantage of your hospitality." Dominic looked up at them, holding something in his hand. "But I need your car."

Charlie felt his stomach drop. The young man they had taken in, that he had just lied to his brother about and swore to himself was the innocent victim in all of this, was holding a small pistol. Pointed right at him. He swallowed and tried to keep an angry expression on his face, rather than show his rapidly rising fear.

Dominic must have read the look on his face, for he went on, "I am not who you think I am. But I can not sit here and wait for them to find me. I'm sorry, but this is the only way I can escape."

"Here," Charlie said quietly. He slowly dug into his shorts pocket and pulled out the car keys. "Take it, do whatever you want. Just let us go."

"I will not hurt you." He looked at the gun he held for a moment, and then lowered it towards the floor. Then he stood up and reached out to take the keys, saying, "I know you will call your brother as soon as I leave. Please tell him that all I wanted to do was to get away."

Charlie stepped back to allow him access to the door. "I'll tell him what happened," he said quietly, a hint of steel in his voice. "I'll tell him everything." His eyes flickered down to the gun, but he didn't say anything else.

Dominic shifted the bundle of clothes under one arm, and Charlie flinched. "Please give me a head start, at least." He walked towards the door, turning as he did so to keep his attention directed at Charlie, although he didn't raise the gun from his side. "I really am sorry, both of you." Then he opened the door and was gone.

Weak-kneed, Charlie sank onto the bed. Across the room, Larry had raised a hand to his mouth, but seemed to regain his composure quickly. "Are you all right, Charles?" he asked quietly.

Charlie gave a slow nod. "How could I have been so stupid?" he asked. "So damn trusting. I'm every bit as naïve as Don claims I am."

"I'm not so certain about that." Larry pulled the desk chair over and sat the wrong way on it, his arms folded across the back. "If he was the kidnapper, wouldn't he have taken our vehicle yesterday, at the first opportunity? He should have wanted to get away from the vicinity of his crime as quickly as possible."

"Maybe he thought he could talk us into giving it to him," Charlie muttered.

Larry was slowly shaking his head. "He had that weapon the entire time, and he only showed it out of fear of his own life."

"You're defending him?" Charlie flung himself to his feet and stared at his friend. "He just held us at gunpoint, stole our car, and you're defending him?"

Outside, the roar of the car's engine made them both look up. Charlie crossed the room and flung open the door, watching as Koristet pulled away, past the main building and on a dirt road headed east, away from the direct route to the interstate. Well, he had their topographic maps of the area that had been sitting on the front seat, so he should be able to find his way to the highway.

For a moment, Charlie viciously hoped he would get lost anyway.

"I'm going to call Don," he said over his shoulder. "Save your sympathetic analysis for him." Then he stalked off, wondering what in the world he was going to say to his brother about the mess he'd made of things.


	5. Chapter 4

Disclaimer, yadda yadda yadda, in the prologue.

dHALL wins a cookie for being the first person to notice the songs opening the chapters. Coming soon to an iTunes outlet near you: the "Z is for Zzyzx" soundtrack (to be listed in the final chapter).

oooooooooooooooo

Chapter 4  
June 3, 2006  
12:45 P.M.  
FBI Field Office, Los Angeles

"Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino…"

Don looked over at David, who was humming while poring over a map of San Bernardino County. "Practicing for karaoke night?"

David flushed. "No, I just realized that all I know about any of these places is that they're in the song. I've never been out that way. Is it all pretty much desert?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Don shook his head. "I think the CHP is going to give it another day and then figure either our suspect got away down the interstate, or his bones are drying out in the desert somewhere."

"Then it's our turn to find him, I suppose."

The corner of Don's mouth turned up. "That's why they pay us the big bucks, right?"

"Yeah, right." David gave him a rueful grin and turned back to the map spread across his desk. He tapped a spot on the map with his pen. "Unless he was picked up along the freeway, this is the only place he could be within walking distance."

Don leaned over his shoulder. "Desert Studies Center," he read off the map. He frowned and tried to remember the name of the place where Charlie and Larry were staying from the phone call he had made yesterday. "That can't be a coincidence," he muttered, reaching for his cell phone.

"What is it?" David asked, looking over his shoulder at him.

He pressed the first speed dial button, raising the phone to his ear. All he heard was Charlie's voice mail, so he left a short request to call him back right away. "I think that's where Charlie is this weekend," he replied, flipping the phone shut.

"But the CHP must have searched it already," David said. "I mean, it's the only sign of civilization for miles around."

"Can you give them a call and verify that?" Don asked. "It would be just my luck to have my brother out there in the desert with an armed suspect running around on the loose, and the cops not even checking the most obvious place."

David gave him a quick, reassuring grin, and turned to the phone.

"Hey, Don." Megan was walking up to the cubicle. "Check this out. I spoke with a contact at Homeland Security, and no one there was called out to the site of the crash. No one sent any agents out there, and they can't find anyone who might have gone out there on their own."

"So who were those two guys?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I'm trying to track down the two CHP officers who were on the scene to get a description."

"You think these mysterious DHS guys might have helped our suspect get away?"

She shrugged. "It's certainly a possibility. It's also possible that they were trying to finish what the wreck started."

His brow furrowed. "But they would have had to be keeping up with the car, and from what we know, the CHP couldn't even manage that."

"Unless they were coming from the other direction and were supposed to meet up with Koristet. Michelle Zadera still hasn't given us any reason why she would have been kidnapped, did she?"

"No, but I'm going to go back to talk to her and take you along. She's more likely to have thought of something once the shock has worn off and she has a little time to think about it."

"Right. When did you want to go?"

"Tomorrow afternoon, I think."

"Don." David was hanging up the phone at his desk as he turned to face him. "The CHP talked with the manager of the center, and he hasn't seen anyone out of place. But he knows to keep an eye out."

"Well, that's something." He leaned back against his desk, grateful to be released from worrying about his little brother. "Forensics said they should be done testing the gun that was found in the wreck within another hour, so we can start trying to determine ownership. And Colby's supposed to get back any minute with Koristet's father, so we can see if he knows how to find his son."

"He's coming in?" Megan raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, but it's totally voluntary, since he's got diplomatic immunity. As does his son, for that matter. We'll see how cooperative he is."

Megan shook her head. "Does Ms. Zadera know that we can't do anything to prosecute her kidnapper?"

"If we even find him," Don muttered. He opened his mouth to say more, but the ding of the elevator caught his attention, and he turned to see Colby and an older man exiting the elevator, Colby respectfully indicating the way to the conference room before heading in their direction.

As he approached the three of them, he began to speak in a low tone. "Shockingly enough, Mr. Koristet insists his son can't have done anything like what we're accusing him of, and that since he's been missing since yesterday morning, we should be focusing more of our efforts on finding him. I think he's more concerned about us finding Koristet Jr. safe and sound than the possibility that his son might be a criminal."

Don ran his hand over his jaw. "Well, we'll just have to see what he can tell us."

Fifteen minutes later, Don's frustration level was rising. Tomas Koristet was a distinguished-looking man with dark hair showing salt-and-pepper around the temples, and a careful manner of stepping around all of the questions he was asked. He was polite but firm as he insisted that his son could not have kidnapped anyone, that he might be a little wild at times but he couldn't possibly harm anyone else. In fact, he was wondering why the FBI hadn't called him in sooner, considering it was his automobile that was broken into pieces out in the Mojave Desert and his son who had gone missing.

Don mentally winced, knowing he was going to sound like an idiot as he answered, "We hadn't finished running down the paperwork until this morning, which is when we contacted you. This car just cleared Customs three days ago, is that right?"

"Apparently so, but since I never actually saw the vehicle, I can't be certain what the papers say." Tomas leaned forward and steepled his fingers. "The car was supposed to be delivered to my home in Nevada two days ago, and I haven't even laid my eyes on it. Now it has been wrecked driving _away_ from my home, my son is missing, and you claim it is all his fault."

Colby reached out to lay a color photograph of Michelle Zadera in front of him. "Do you recognize this woman, Mr. Koristet?"

The older man studied the photograph, then shook his head. "Is she supposed to be his accomplice or something?"

"No, this young woman identified your son as the man who forced her into that car at gunpoint and drove off with her."

He shook his head. "Impossible. Dominic would never do something like that."

Colby sat back in his chair. "Does he often disappear without letting you know where he's going?"

Koristet waved a hand in the air. "He's twenty years old, for goodness' sake. He doesn't have to ask my permission before leaving the house."

Don exchanged a glance with Colby before asking, "Is Las Vegas your primary residence, Mr. Koristet?"

"No, I spend most of my time here in Los Angeles, at the consulate. I usually make it up to Nevada every other weekend or so."

"And what about Dominic?"

"He spends some of his time here, some of it there. Some of it traveling around. He's particularly fond of New York, although I believe he enjoys Miami and San Francisco as well."

"Must be nice to be able to travel like that," Colby said lightly. "Most people his age are bound to their jobs or their college schedules."

Koristet's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe there's anything wrong with my son enjoying certain privileges. I spent most of my life living under a Communist state, Agent Granger, and I want my son to have all of the opportunities I didn't. If that involves postponing higher education while he travels and takes advantage of the modest wealth I've managed to accumulate, then so be it."

Colby retained his mild tone as she went on, "Does your son own a firearm?"

The older man shifted slightly in his seat. "He's under the age of twenty-one."

"That wouldn't matter in either California or Nevada," Colby quickly replied.

Koristet hesitated a moment longer before answering. "There are a few guns at the house, but they're all registered in my name."

"How many is a few?" Don interjected. "Would he have access to them?"

"My son is not a child who needs a locked gun cabinet in the house," Koristet retorted.

Don leaned back in his seat. Time to try a different line of questioning. "Can you tell me more about the Lotus Exige, Mr. Koristet?" Don asked. "Where did you purchase it from?"

The other man's eyes narrowed, and he leaned a little farther forward. "I'm here because I want to find my son, Agent Eppes, not because I'm submitting myself to an interrogation. And while we're speaking about my vehicle, I would like to know where it is and how soon I can have access to it."

Don pursed his lips, and Colby stepped in. "We know you're concerned for your son. But if you're right, and Dominic is an innocent party, he's still involved with that car somehow, and we need to know everything we can about it."

Don added, "As for the car itself, I'm afraid there isn't much left to see. But if you'll give us the name of your insurance company, we'll contact them as soon as the car has been examined for evidence, and they can start assessing the damage."

"Look, I don't—"

The ringing of Don's cell phone cut off Mr. Koristet. He looked down at the small screen to see Charlie's number. "Excuse me," he said, rising to his feet and walking to a corner of the room. He could hear Colby's quiet voice reassuring their guest as he flipped open the phone. "Yeah, Charlie, what is it?"

"Don?"

He straightened up. Something was off about his brother's tone of voice, a note of uncertainty that he wasn't used to hearing. "Charlie, you okay?" He was dimly aware of Colby's head moving as he turned to look at him, but he concentrated on the voice at the other end of the line.

"Yeah, I'm fine," came the shaky reply. "We're both fine, but—I screwed up. I'm sorry, Don, I shouldn't have done it."

A brief glance told him that walking outside into the hallway wouldn't gain him any more privacy, considering the number of agents passing by, so he kept his voice down instead. "What are you talking about, Charlie?"

He heard a deep sigh. "He was here, Don. Your suspect was here, and he took our car."

"You saw Dominic Koristet? He was there? When?" His rapid-fire questions had caught the attention of Mr. Koristet, and both of the other occupants of the room were now staring at him. He turned his back on them, instead facing out the windows and the familiar view of downtown.

"Just a few minutes ago. He's headed east out of the Desert Studies Center, although there aren't many roads that way, and I can give you the description of the car, although I don't know the license plate number, because it was a rental—"

"Charlie, slow down. You're telling me he showed up there just now and has your car?" He heard the scraping of a chair behind him that indicated someone was standing up. In the reflection of the glass, he saw the flash of Colby's white shirt as he came to his feet.

He could hear Charlie swallow through the phone. "He, uh, actually he was here overnight. But then this morning, yeah, he said he was too afraid for his life and had to leave, so he, uh, took our car."

"You let him drive off in your car?" That sounded a little excessively generous, even for Charlie.

"Well, actually…he had a gun."

Don closed his eyes, fighting back all of the terrifying scenarios that sprang to his mind with those words. He took a deep breath and asked quietly, "Charlie, are you sure you're all right?"

The reply was more confident this time. "I told you, we're fine. Just a little upset, that's all."

_Yeah, you haven't seen upset until I get there,_ he wanted to say, but he bit his tongue. Time enough for recriminations later. "All right, I'm going to call the CHP officers who are searching the area and send them your way. Then Megan and I will be up there as soon as we can, about an hour and a half from now. You take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will. And Don…I'm sorry."

"We'll talk about that later." He flipped the phone shut, and turned to face Colby and Tomas, both of whom were still looking at him. Neither of them said anything, but the same question was in both their eyes, the older man's look more demanding, Colby's with a degree of concern.

He looked Koristet straight in the eye and said, much more calmly than he felt had any right to, "Your son just held up my brother at gunpoint and stole his vehicle." Ignoring Colby's startled intake of breath, he went on, "We're going to go out there right now and figure out what's going on. You, sir, are going to stay here and talk to Agent Granger and tell him everything you can about your son and how we can find him."

Tomas Koristet was now standing as well, and he was taller than either of the other two in the room. "You can't make me stay here, Agent Eppes," he said in the same firm, calm tone he'd been using throughout the conversation.

_The man must make a good diplomat_, Don thought as he suppressed a grimace. For once, the person in the interrogation room saying they couldn't make him stay was actually in the right. "No, not legally, but I'm sure you can see this situation would be much easier to resolve if you did." He was still holding his cell phone, and he clenched his fingers around it to keep himself from hurling it at the table, or the glass walls, or the man standing in front of him whose son had just pointed a gun at Charlie Eppes.

Koristet regarded him for a moment longer. "You do understand that as my son, Dominic is also covered by diplomatic immunity. I do not for a second believe that he threatened another person with a gun, but even if he did, he is not prosecutable under your laws."

_Unless you allow him to be_, Don thought, and looking at Colby, he could read the same thought on his face. Along with the unlikeliness of that possibility. Aloud, he said, "Well, I'm sorry, but if my brother tells me it was Dominic who carjacked him, I'm going to believe him." Then he bit back thoughts of how he had believed Charlie half an hour ago when he told him he had never seen that same man, and stalked out of the room.

In their cubicle, Megan was talking to David, a photograph of Michelle Zadera on the desk next to him, but they both looked up at Don's stormy approach. "What's going on?" Megan asked, a hint of wariness in her voice.

He sighed as he opened his desk drawer. When he pulled out a spare clip and tucked into his pocket, Megan's eyes widened. "Does this mean you found Dominic?"

"No, of all people, Charlie found Koristet. Or rather, Koristet found him."

"The Desert Studies Center?" David guessed. He had risen to his feet along with Megan, both of them with apprehensive looks on their faces.

"Apparently," Don replied grimly. "And apparently he's armed."

"Is Charlie all right?" Megan asked quickly.

"He said he's fine, but that Koristet took his car." As long as he kept it to short sentences, just gave a bare outline of the facts, he didn't have to think about Charlie staring down the barrel of a gun. He went on, "David, I want you to call the CHP and get them to redirect their resources. Start looking east of the Desert Studies Center; that's where Charlie said he was going. Then get down to Forensics and find out who owns the gun that was in the car, see how to connect it back to either one of the Koristets. Megan, you and I are going out to Zzyzx to follow up with Charlie." He pulled a road map out of the filing cabinet and tossed it at her.

"What about him?" David jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the man still sitting in the interrogation room.

Don paused and looked at Tomas Koristet, who had taken a seat again and from what he could see was having a lively, though not heated, discussion with his other agent. "Colby's got him taken care of, but check in a little while and see if he needs any help. We can't hold him, but right now we're his best chance at finding his son, so I think he'll cooperate."

David nodded and turned to pick up the phone. Don looked at Megan, who gave him a short, tight nod. Then he turned to head out.

They were standing in the elevator when something occurred to him. He thought back for a moment, replaying every word of Charlie's conversation. When he had it fixed in his head, he turned to his partner and spoke quietly. "He said, 'We're both fine,' Megan."

She looked at him. "What?"

The average person wouldn't have noticed, but someone who had worked closely with Megan Reeves for nearly a year and whose job depended on being able to read people would see the mixture of anxiety and relief lurking in her eyes. He elaborated, "Larry's with Charlie, but he said they were both all right."

Her shoulders relaxed slightly, but he could see a line of tension still present. It occurred to him that she was waiting for something else, and then he realized what. If Colby were here, he knew exactly what Megan would be expecting. Some snarky comment about physicists or white food or something.

Instead he turned to face the elevator doors and said lightly, "Of course, Charlie won't be all right for long once I get my hands on him…"

As he trailed off, he snuck a sideways look at her. The corner of her mouth had turned up, but as she stared down at the floor, her shoulders had completely relaxed. He smiled to himself, and when the elevator doors opened into the parking garage, led the way without another word.


	6. Chapter 5

Disclaimer and thank-yous in the prologue.

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Chapter 5  
June 4, 2006  
7:20 P.M.  
Mojave Desert

"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray; I've been for a walk on a winter's day…"

The song might have been older than he was, but the familiar lyrics were soothing to Charlie's frazzled nerves. He'd heard the song many times while he was growing up, of course, but "California Dreamin'" had taken on new meaning during his years under the gray skies at Princeton. It had become even more special when he had returned home to California and settled back in to the familiar climate and surroundings.

And right now, the melancholy of the song fit his mood perfectly. He sat back on his knees, sand and gravel pressing into his shins, and looked out over the hilly, barren desert as the song continued to play through his earbuds. The JPL team was clustered around the rover a few yards away, fiddling with the controls on the remote device like they had been for the last half hour. His latest attempt at getting the little machine out of the mess it was stuck in hadn't been any more successful than the previous two, and it looked like the current try wasn't going any better.

His personal mess wasn't exactly fixed, either. He looked past the group of scientists to the jeep parked off the dusty track that functioned as a road, some fifty yards away, and then to the black SUV parked behind the jeep. David Sinclair stood leaning against the car, his eyes focused on the activity around the rover but occasionally turning his head to sweep his gaze across the desert. His arms were folded across his chest, and though dusk was less than an hour away, he still wore his shades. When Charlie had talked to him earlier, he couldn't read the other man's eyes, and it had made him feel a little uncomfortable. He used to being an equal of sorts to his brother's colleagues, but the current situation was a little different. Although he knew it wasn't true, Charlie felt like David was there to keep an eye on him, like he was the one who was wanted by the law.

He frowned as he dropped his gaze back to the laptop sitting on a piece of cardboard to keep it off the bare ground, knowing that he was lucky he _wasn't_ in trouble with the law. Don had been furious with him yesterday when he arrived but his fury hadn't been as great as he was anticipating. Either the ride had been long enough to ease his anger, or Megan had talked him down, or he just wasn't as upset with Charlie's breach of ethics as would be expected.

More likely, he hadn't wanted to blow up at his younger brother in front of the staff and guests of the Desert Studies Center. More likely, Charlie mused, he was going to hear about it later. His brow furrowed again as he wondered how long he could reasonably stay out here in the desert, waiting for Don to cool down. Would a few weeks be enough time?

There was a ragged cheer from the group clustered around the rover. He yanked the white cords away from his ears in time to hear the sound trail off into a chorus of groans, and sighed. At this rate, it would be a few weeks before he left no matter what was going on with the FBI.

'Guess I'm up to the plate again,' Charlie thought as he unfolded himself from his kneeling position and carefully picked up the laptop, stuffing the iPod into his pocket. He forced his mind to shift back into work mode, away from the nagging guilt about deceiving his brother. They'd find the fugitive. It wasn't like he could get very far without being noticed; there were only so many routes out of the Mojave, and not a lot of places to hide.

Larry had been hovering on the edge of the group, and he was the first to speak as Charlie approached. "I maintain it has something to do with the friction coefficients, Charles. Either that, or the sand grains here are larger than their Martian counterparts."

"I thought the reason we were here is that the dust and sand particles are about as similar to Mars as you can get," Charlie sighed. "And I've checked the friction coefficients a half a dozen times. Maybe I've been assuming too much power is available from the rover."

"She's got nothin' to do all day but sit there and lap up solar energy like a pig at a trough." Harold Zorbin, Larry's colleague, was a tall Texan who took glee in both matching and defying the prevailing stereotypes of people from that part of the country. His metaphors were as homespun as you could get, even during scientific talks Charlie had seen him give at CalSci, but the juxtaposition with the technical content of the presentations was a startling contrast. "Believe me, she's got plenty of juice."

"Yes, but maybe our assumptions about how long her battery life lasts were overly optimistic." Charlie had fallen into the habit of referring to the rover as "she," despite his dislike of the old-fashioned gender roles that traditionally went along with that mode of speech. But that was how everyone else spoke about Spirit, so it was easier to go with the flow. "Maybe more is draining out at night than we've been modeling."

"If that's the case, we can just wait till later in the day when we're sure her batteries are fully charged," Zorbin shrugged. "Don't change that part of your equations."

Charlie looked down at his laptop, mentally running through the list of possibilities. Sand grain size, no. Battery power, no. They'd tried rocking the rover back and forth as if it were stuck in a snow bank, but that had failed as well. Charlie was afraid he was running out of ideas, but he was determined to stick with it. He had to get something good out of this trip, after the way he'd botched things with Dominic Koristet.

The crunch of footsteps on gravel caught his ear, and he turned to see David walking towards them, folding his cell phone shut. "Charlie," he called as he approached. "They found the car."

"Here, we'll look this over while you go straighten things out." Zorbin removed the laptop from Charlie's hands. "Just keep us updated, y'hear?"

The rest of the team had been largely uncurious about the fugitive roaming near their desert worksite, both when Charlie and Larry had sheepishly explained the situation to them last night, and when they were escorted out to the worksite by an FBI vehicle that morning after the explanation that until further notice, they were not to go anywhere unescorted. That was the compromise Don had demanded after Zorbin and his team refused to stop their work with the rover while the authorities searched for Koristet. Zorbin had reasoned that they could see anyone coming towards them from miles away, and although Don was dubious about the ability of the scientists to pay attention to anything but the task in front of them, he had grudgingly agreed.

Charlie walked towards the FBI agent, meeting him halfway, hearing footsteps behind him that he assumed were Larry's. "Where was it?" he asked when he was closer. "And where's Dominic?"

David waved an arm eastward, removing his sunglasses and tucking them into his front pocket. "About thirty miles east of here. The car was left just off the road."

Charlie gave a sigh of relief, and beside him, Larry did the same. "That's strange," his friend murmured. "We had debated whether or not to refill the tank shortly before we arrived, and decided in Barstow to engage in that bit of basic maintenance. He can't have run out of gas."

"No, it got stuck in a soft spot along the side of the road," David went on. "The CHP just found the car, but it's too dark to look for tracks. So they'll try it again in the morning." He clapped a hand on Charlie's shoulder. "We'll get him soon, and I'll be out of your hair."

Charlie nodded, but inwardly he was thinking about Dominic, wandering out in the desert. He didn't think there had been any water in the car, although the young man did have the long-sleeve shirt and pants that he had been wearing when he arrived. But he wouldn't last more than a few hours out in the sun, even with clothing as protection, and given the direction he had driven, it wasn't likely that he would have come across any other cars he could hijack.

That thought made Charlie grimace. The man had held him at gunpoint, stolen his car, kidnapped a young woman, and who knew what else. He didn't deserve pity. Besides, it was almost dark; it wasn't like he was going to die of heat stroke, and the CHP or the FBI would certainly find him in the morning.

"Was that Don on the phone?" he asked hesitantly, gesturing towards the cell phone David still held in his hand.

"Yeah, it was," the other man replied, dropping the phone into his pocket. "He said he was going to come back out here to be here when they catch up with Koristet, and bring him in himself." His sidelong glance at Charlie left no doubt as to why that was the case, and Charlie grimaced.

"It was my understanding that Mr. Koristet is immune from criminal charges because of his father's status," Larry said. "How can he 'bring him in' without violating the rules of diplomatic engagement?"

The daylight might have been fading, but there was still enough to see the slight twinkle in David's eye. "At this point, it's as much a rescue operation as anything else. And since Koristet Sr. is waiting for news of his son…"

"…They might as well meet up at the FBI office," Charlie finished. "And if Don happens to ask him a few questions on the long drive back to L.A…"

David grinned. "Your brother's a smart man, Charlie. Not as smart as you, but don't tell him I said that."

Any other time, the jibe would have made Charlie smile in response, but instead he looked down at the dusty ground. "Can't say I'm feeling too smart at the moment," he muttered.

"Hey, we all make mistakes in our judgment," David responded, clapping Charlie on the shoulder. "Just glad you're all right."

He gave a wan smile and looked up. "That's nice of you to say, David." Particularly since David didn't know the whole story, Charlie thought. He didn't know about the first conversation Charlie'd had with Don, the one where he found out his guest's identity but didn't turn him in. For the moment, at least, it appeared that Don was going to wait until later to deal with the ramifications of Charlie's little error of judgment.

Larry interjected, "What was the terrain like in the vicinity of the car? Will Mr. Koristet find it amenable for concealing his location?"

David blinked as he parsed the sentence, then answered, "I don't know. Does the terrain change much as you go east of here? 'Cause if it's like this," he waved at the rocky terrain around them, "unless he finds a really big boulder to hide underneath, he's not going to have much luck."

Charlie looked down at the ground underneath his feet, analyzing it not from the point of view of a mechanical robot stuck in the sand, but a person trying to evade pursuit. The landscape didn't fit the stereotype of a desert with row upon row of sand dunes; it was more like bare dirt with many scattered stones of varying sizes, dotted with creosote and other scrubby-looking plants. David was right, there wouldn't be any kind of cover large enough to hide a person. But if you planted your feet carefully, you wouldn't leave much in the way of tracks. On the other hand, he thought, what was a spoiled rich kid like Dominic likely to know about keeping his tracks covered? More likely, the FBI would be able to follow his tracks like those of a pig in a mud bank, as Zorbin would say.

Larry was staring off into the distance, squinting at something Charlie couldn't see. "What is it, Larry?" he asked, and noticed that David was looking in that direction as well.

"Well, towards the horizon, there are some shapes that would indicate some kind of change of elevation. And I'm recalling from my study of the topographic maps on the journey here that there are, in fact, some minor mountain ranges in that direction." He furrowed his brow. "I just can't remember if the symbols I saw indicating abandoned mines were in that same location or not."

"Mines?" David asked, reaching for his cell phone. "If he can actually find a hiding place, we need to keep up the search tonight. We should be able to get a helicopter with infrared equipment out here to do that."

Larry had that look on his face that Charlie was all too familiar with, when the physicist wasn't completely sure of what he was saying, but was talking out loud as away of working through the problem. He hadn't gotten a good look at the maps himself, so he couldn't help with that angle, but he could try to probe his friend's memory a bit more. "Larry, what else was on the map that had the mines on it? Do you remember what quadrangle it was, what area it covered?"

The physicist put his hands out in front of him, moving them around as though he were pantomiming feeling a wall in front of him. Charlie exchanged a look with David, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing. When Charlie opened his mouth, Larry pointed a warning finger at him, and continued with his strange motions.

After what seemed like forever but was probably less than half a minute, Larry lowered his hands. "It wasn't the map representing the area where we're currently standing. Topographic maps cover the surface of the whole country in an even grid, and it was the grid square two east of here. There's definitely the potential for some subterranean activity, if my memory serves me correctly." He looked at David. "I assume you can get a hold of the necessary maps to work that out?"

"Yeah, no problem," the agent replied, flipping open his phone. "I'll have Don put someone at the office on it right away, match it up with where the car was."

He turned away to make the phone call, the reception apparently functioning just fine, and Charlie looked back down at the ground underneath his feet. "What did they mine out here, anyway? Gold? Silver?"

Larry shook his head. "A tiny bit of gold, but as I recall from the information I read on the way up here, it was actually borate mining."

"Borate?" Charlie raised his eyebrows. "That doesn't sound like a precious metal."

"No, it's commercially known as borax. You're familiar with the Twenty-Mule Team?" When Charlie nodded, he went on, "The Mojave Desert has one of the richest deposits in the world. It's about the only economic activity that goes on up here, aside from truck stops along the freeway."

"Huh." He thought about that for a moment. "Well, I just hope the helicopter can find Dominic before he burrows down into one of those old mines."

"Yes, it could be quite dangerous for him. And the poor man doesn't have any water except for the spare bottle in the trunk."

Charlie looked at him. As scatterbrained as Larry might appear to be sometimes, there was a compassionate core to his being that never failed to shine through. "You really don't wish him any harm, do you?"

"Oh come on, Charles, I'm unhappy that the man absconded with our vehicle, but I don't wish him any bodily harm, no." He paused and gave Charlie a quizzical look. "Are you telling me that you do?"

Charlie pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. "No, not really. I'm just surprised he didn't try to dig his way out. I mean, it might be difficult with only one person, but all you'd have to do is find a couple of flat rocks of the right size, put them under the tires, and …"

He trailed off as he saw the same dawning comprehension on Larry's face that he could feel on his own. "We could find the right kind of rock with one of Spirit's cameras…" he went on.

"…And direct her arms to grasp it and maneuver it into place," Larry finished. "Why didn't we think of that sooner?"

"I'll have to calculate the right size and shape of rock for her to look for, based on the weight of both the rover and the rock itself," Charlie started, the words tripping over each other as they spilled forth. His earlier melancholy had been replaced with the familiar excitement when a new idea took over his senses, drowning out everything else in its path. "And we need to know exactly how far her arms can extend, so we know how large our search radius is."

"And don't forget the density of the rocks, which means you'll need to know their chemical composition…"

Waving at Zorbin and hurrying to reach the rest of the CalSci team while there was still enough light to see by, talking animatedly and gesturing the whole while, they literally left thoughts of the fugitive, as well as David Sinclair, in their dust.


	7. Chapter 6

Well, this is obviously not going to be finished before the new season starts like I had hoped, but for the handful of you still reading this, thanks for hanging in there!

Disclaimer and thanks in the prologue.

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Chapter 6  
June 5, 2006  
6:10 A.M.  
Black Tank Wash, Mojave Desert

"It's the edge of the world and all of western civilization; the sun may rise in the East, at least it settles in the final location…"

Don shook his head to clear it. Charlie had left one of his CDs in the Suburban earlier in the week, and he'd popped it into the car on the way out here. Now he remembered why he avoided the Red Hot Chili Peppers; the lyrics would pop back into his head at the most inopportune moments.

Like right now, walking through a rocky gully, chasing a wanted and armed fugitive, with dawn just breaking down here in the depths of the wash. The black, pock-marked rock on the mountainsides spoke of volcanic violence centuries ago, while the scoured hillsides and huge boulders scattered about warned of the power of a past flash flood. Since the area was considered geologically dormant, and since it hadn't rained in several months, Don figured they had nothing to worry about.

Nothing from the landscape, at last. Charlie and Larry had each given him a detailed description of Dominic Koristet's actions, though he was surprised at the amount of slack they were willing to cut a guy who had held them up at gunpoint and stolen their car. Not that they were advocating calling off the search, but they weren't as upset as Don would have been in their situation. Another FBI agent might have attributed it to two academics out of touch with the real world of carjackings and murders, but Don trusted these two witnesses. Which made him wonder if there wasn't more to the story than what either one of them had said, despite what the facts appeared to say.

Ahead of him, Colby held up his hand, and Don came to a halt. The crunch of their footsteps on the desiccated lava would be heard more than a few yards away, and one of the abandoned mines Larry had turned them on to wasn't too far ahead. He checked for the third or fourth time to make sure that his weapon was ready, looked behind him to exchange a brief glance with David, and nodded at Colby's questioning face. The blond agent went forward on his own, making almost no noise on the rock-strewn ground.

When Don saw that Colby had reached the rock outcropping that signaled the entrance to the mine, he crept forward, trying to remember his fugitive recovery days and the mechanics of making a quiet approach. He was embarrassed to note that his own footsteps were considerably less stealthy than those of his junior agent. Behind him, David wasn't faring much better. He mentally shrugged, and nodded at Colby when they were ready.

Colby took two silent steps forward into the mine entrance, weapon extended in front of him. Don followed closely, training his gaze on the back of the dark space as soon as his eyes had adjusted to the light. It felt empty, decayed, like no one had been here for years. A dark tunnel led away from the side of the cramped cave, with a broken timber blocking the entrance. When Colby looked up from studying the dusty ground and nodded, his feeling was confirmed. Theirs were the only feet to disturb the surface in here for quite a while.

They sighed and lowered their weapons, the adrenaline rush subsiding. "Two down, two to go," David called softly from his post outside.

"And he's gotta be in one of these," Colby said, waving his arm towards the interior of the mine. "It's not like he could hide outside very long, at least not once the sun comes up."

"Megan, do you copy?" Don asked, addressing the absent agent through his earpiece. She was waiting with the Jeep out on what passed for the main road in case they flushed Koristet out of the gully without initially capturing him.

"Crossing the Henderson Mine off the list," she replied. "How are you guys doing?"

"I'll be glad when we find this guy," Don replied, wiping his brow of sweat. The Kevlar felt heavier than normal with the heat of the early morning adding a few pounds to his perception. But with an armed fugitive out there, he'd take the sweat over the alternative.

"Reminds me of the Negev Desert," David said. "Hottest place I've ever been, worse than summer in the Bronx. You could just see the heat shimmering in the air, same as here."

"Reminds me of some places I'd rather not think about," Colby muttered, looking at the rock walls around them with a grimace. "I thought I was done with searching through caves for guys on the most wanted list when I left Afghanistan."

"Yeah, well, past expertise has a way of coming back to haunt you, I'm afraid." Don looked at his agent more closely. "Let me know if it's too weird, okay?"

Colby waved a hand as if to say, "Don't worry about it," but out loud all he said was, "We'd better get this over with before the sun starts beating down on us."

They filed back out, Colby again in the lead due to his experience in, as he had said, searching for guys in caves. The next mine on the map was about a quarter mile up the wash and several yards up the hillside. Anyone watching at the entrance would see them coming—and would also have the higher ground.

So they set off uphill through the sharp rocks, wincing every once in a while as one of them stepped on a particularly sharp piece. It was slow going without the pathway that the gully had provided, but in fifteen minutes they had reached an old, battered wooden sign whose faded red paint signaled the location of the Black Jack Mine. As before, Colby was the first to ease around the last boulder, Don close behind, with David staying focused on the area around them in case of an ambush.

This time, things felt different. He exchanged a quick glance with Colby, who flicked his eyes down to the footprints in the dust heading farther back into the empty mine, then back up to meet Don's eyes. He nodded, raising his weapon a little higher and signaling to the junior agent to cover him. Placing his feet as quietly as possible on the rocky floor, he moved forward.

The initial opening must have been a natural cavern, because the walls showed little trace of gouging from pickaxes or explosives. The rock was the same black basalt as outside, absorbing the light filtering in from the entrance and making it difficult to see the back of the cavern. Don slowly withdrew the heavy flashlight from his belt, unwilling to turn it on unless he absolutely had to for fear of alerting their quarry to their presence. He held it up, crossing his arms in front of him, braced at the wrists, one hand with a finger on the flashlight switch, one with a finger on the trigger.

At first the cavern seemed to be shallow, but as his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see that it took a sharp bend towards the back. He moved to the side wall, gesturing behind him for Colby to do the same, to avoid appearing as silhouettes outlined against the daylight at the mouth of the cave. They eased around towards the back of the cavern, placing one foot in front of the other as slowly and carefully as possible.

Don rounded the corner and heard a soft sound in front of him, like a shoe scuffing against rock. Instantly, he snapped the flashlight on, shouting, "FBI! Put your hands up!" Behind him, Colby was doing the same thing, and the cacophony of shouts and echoes was nearly deafening in the narrow passageway.

In the beam of his flashlight, halfway down a corridor that was comparable in length to the walkways behind the FBI building, a young man stood with his empty hands down at his sides. The now-torn shirt and shorts were the same clothes that Charlie had described lending him, and his facial features certainly fit the description. But Don asked anyway. "Dominic Koristet?"

The young man's face was fearful as he nodded. "Who are you?" he asked.

"We're with the FBI. I need you to put your hands up, Mr. Koristet. Are you carrying a weapon?" Don knew he couldn't arrest the guy, protected as he was by his father's profession, but he did have his own self-preservation to think about above all else.

"It is down there," Koristet said, gesturing at the floor beyond the pool of light spilling from the flashlight. His gaze never left Don's face. "You can not put me in jail, you know," he continued in his slight Slavic accent.

"Thanks for the legal advice," Colby drawled as he edged past Don, finger still on the trigger, moving his own flashlight until it caught the gleam of gunmetal on the ground. "Is that the line you always use to get yourself out of trouble?"

Before he could respond, Don snapped, "Why did you hold up my brother and steal his car?"

Dominic blinked and slowly raised one hand to push the dark bangs out of his eyes, Don tracking his movements with his gun all the while. "Your brother?" His expression turned more wary. "Is that why you're out here? You are not really FBI?"

"We're out here because you've been identified as the perpetrator in two separate crimes," Colby retorted as he crouched down and grabbed the gun from the rocky surface at their feet. "So turn around and put your hands behind your back."

Dominic didn't move. "Let me see your identification."

"All right," Don said, checking to make sure Colby had the kid covered with both weapon and light as he reached down to his waist with the hand holding the flashlight and removed his FBI credentials. He tossed the leather wallet to the ground at Koristet's feet, and the young man slowly bent to pick it up. He flipped open the badge and studied it, turning it so the beam of Colby's flashlight illuminated the clear plastic cover. When he was done, he gently tossed it back so that it landed at Don's feet. "Now yours," he said to Colby.

The blond agent exchanged a look with Don, then grudgingly lobbed his own badge in Koristet's direction. He examined it just as closely, then returned it in the same manner. "I will come with you," he finally said in the same calm tone of voice he'd been using the entire time. "You do not need to restrain me."

"Oh yes, we do," Colby said, tucking his flashlight under his arm while he reached behind him for his handcuffs.

Dominic backed up a step, his head grazing a low spot in the ceiling. "Do you really think I can climb down from here and walk over all of the rocks outside without using my hands? I will, how do you say it, come quietly."

"Why?" Don asked abruptly. "Why now, when you haven't gone anywhere quietly in the last two days?"

The young man turned to face him, his clear blue eyes reflecting the flashlight, the fading bruise around his left eye still in sharp contrast to his pale skin. "Everything I have done has been out of self-defense. I am sorry I took the property of someone who had been nothing but generous to me, but I was in fear of my life." He paused and took a deep breath. "I am still in fear of my life. We should go; if you could find me, others can, too."

Don narrowed his eyes. "From what Charlie said, you weren't so eager to cooperate with the authorities a couple of days ago. What's changed since then?" Now he sounded like he was more than willing to go along, rather than stay hidden in a dormitory or a cave. 'Maybe he just wants a ride back to L.A.,' the cynical corner of his mind piped up.

Koristet shrugged. "I have changed my mind. I assume you have been in touch with my father, yes?"

"Yeah, and he's looking forward to seeing you," Colby answered. "After we ask you a few questions, that is."

The young man shrugged. "I am aware of my rights," was all he said.

Don studied him for a moment. This was unusual behavior, to say the least, from someone who was purported to have forced two different people at gunpoint to give up their vehicles, further compelling one to drive at insane speeds down the freeway in the middle of the night. He'd run into suspects before who suffered from either bipolar mania or something close to it. Maybe this guy was prone to violent fits interspersed with calmer moments. Maybe Megan could pin him down on the drive back. But they'd have to keep a close eye on him, just to be safe. He'd turned on Charlie and Larry in an instant, and he could turn on them, too.

"Megan, we got him," he said into his microphone. "How close can you get to where we are?"

There was a crackle of static, then, "Can't…you…rocks…where…?"

Don sighed. "Guess we're too far inside the mountain here. All right, Dominic, you first. There's a third man at the entrance, so don't try anything."

They made their way back towards the entrance, both men stowing their flashlights but keeping their weapons trained on their suspect. He moved towards the cave entrance without incident, then stopped. A few paces behind him, Don said, "Come on, keep moving."

"Wait." Dominic held up a hand.

"Look, I've had about enough—" Don's impatient words suddenly stopped when he heard it, too. There was a faint sound coming from just outside the mouth of the cave, some kind of scratching or rustling noise that sounded too big to be a rat or any other kind of desert creature.

Don quietly asked his earpiece, "David, do you copy?"

There was no answer.

Don signaled to Colby to keep an eye on their suspect while he made his way to the entrance. He moved stealthily along the rocky wall, knowing that he had the advantage over any intruder because of his position inside the dark cave, but wanting the cover that the occasional protruding rock might afford. Scanning the sun-washed landscape outside, he didn't see anything.

Then he heard the sound again, and trained his weapon on the left side of the entrance as he took a step closer. Behind him, he heard nothing; Colby and Dominic were doing a good job of keeping quiet. He took another step, wondering why David wasn't there to meet them at the entrance. What if Dominic's paranoia had been justified, and there was someone else trying to find him? He was almost to the cave entrance as he took one more step forward.

Then there was an explosion of sound and motion, and Don ducked to the ground, training his gun upwards and tightening his finger on the trigger. The gunshot echoed in the dark cave as his eyes swept back and forth, looking for a threat. His heart pounded for a few beats before he realized what was going on.

Then he had to restrain a laugh.

The sun had finally risen outside, and the last remaining nocturnal desert creatures were heading for cover. That included a small colony of bats who had apparently chosen to make the Black Jack Mine their home. A couple dozen of the small, winged mammals were flying back in to the cooler and darker sanctuary of the cave. Don rose to his feet as the last stragglers flew by, their flapping wings echoing around the dark space of the cave as they disappeared around the bend and into the darkness beyond.

He turned to see Colby sheepishly lowering his gun, while Dominic still looked as tense as ever. "David?" Don called out.

"Are they gone?" After a few seconds, David's head poked around the cave entrance a few yards ahead of where Don was standing. "I saw them coming, and I didn't want to get in the way, you know?"

"Not afraid of a flying rodent, are you?" Colby chuckled.

"I'm not the one who fired my gun," David retorted, giving Don a sideways glance as he did so.

"Yeah, well, I'm lucky it didn't ricochet off one of these rocks." Don grimaced as he slid his weapon back in its holster. "Megan, can you hear me now?"

"Everything okay in there?" came the reply. "I thought I heard shots fired."

"I'll explain it when we get there. We're on our way." He looked around at the other two agents. "Come on, let's get out of here. Too many Saturday afternoon movies are making me a little jumpy right now."

Colby gave Dominic a nudge forward. "Let's go before he accidentally shoots one of us, okay?"

Don gave him a glare, but he knew the jibe was deserved. He'd acted like a nervous rookie back there, firing his weapon before clearly identifying the threat. A ricochet could have been disastrous in that small space, not to mention the possible instability of the abandoned mine and the threat of a collapse. The cave itself was probably secure, but he'd heard stories of hunters accidentally setting off pockets of gas with a poorly-aimed shot that ended up bringing down the roof on whatever was inside.

He wiped the sweat off his brow again and led the way down the slope towards the gully and out of the desert. Well, that was part one of the day. Now all he had to do was persuade someone who couldn't be prosecuted to confess his crimes and explain his motivations for carrying them out, while restraining himself from physically injuring the man who had threatened his brother, all within the confines of the Suburban on the drive back to Los Angeles before Koristet Sr. could shut down the interrogation. He gave a small snort. Piece of cake.


	8. Chapter 7

Still don't own them, still wish I did, still grateful for ritt's help.

oooooooooooo

Chapter 7  
June 5, 2006  
4:33 P.M.  
Desert Studies Center, Zzyzx, CA

"I remember traffic jams, motor boys and girls with tans, nearly was and almost rans, I remember this…"

Charlie laid his head back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, listening to R.E.M. piping through his earbuds. He had about another half an hour of calm before the team would be meeting up to eat a quick dinner. Then they'd head back out to the test site for one last trial run with the mock-up of the rover before giving the go-ahead to JPL to send the instructions up to Spirit. Yesterday evening, he and Larry had convinced the group of the feasibility of Spirit digging herself out, and after overnight communications with the rover, a likely rock candidate had been discovered. This morning, they had practiced the maneuver they were going to ask the rover to carry out on Mars, and it had worked just fine. Now, Zorbin wanted them to give it one more shot, the dress rehearsal before opening night on the Red Planet.

Conveniently, they'd been out at the site when the FBI team had blazed through early that morning with a captive Dominic Koristet in tow. He'd heard all about it from Wilson, the center's manager, when they returned for lunch. The only message he had passed on from Don was that he would talk to Charlie later. He swallowed nervously just thinking about it.

He suddenly wondered if their rental car was still sitting out there, stuck in a sandbank. Triple A probably didn't cover anything so far off a major highway, he thought glumly, hoping that the insurance Larry had on his own vehicle would cover the costs that were likely to accrue from rescuing the rental.

"Hey Larry," he called, pulling the white cords leading to his ears, cutting off the last chorus.

"Mmm?" The physicist was seated cross-legged on his bed, absorbed in a book.

"Do you think the FBI will need to see the car as evidence?"

Larry looked up and blinked. "The car?"

"The car Dominic stole. The car you rented. They must need it as evidence, right?"

His head tilted to the side, Larry replied, "I'm sure they would, if it were a crime they were trying to prosecute. However, I'm not sure of the protocol involved when the alleged perpetrator can't be brought to trial."

Charlie sighed returned his gaze to the ceiling. "I was hoping they'd have to be the ones to figure out how to get it back to L.A."

Larry chuckled. "Surely the same principle that worked for our little Martian colleague will work for an automobile." He reached down and knocked on the wooden frame of the bed. "That is, the principle that worked on the model and has yet to be tested on the real thing."

Charlie felt the corners of his mouth turning up. "Superstitious, are we?"

The physicist spread his hands wide, moving one back quickly to catch the pages of the book as they threatened to close together over where he'd been reading. "The gods are capricious, Charles. A little ritual action never hurt anyone."

Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but he was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Come in," he called, looking at his watch. It was a little earlier than Harold had said he would be by, but maybe they were in a hurry to run the final tests.

But instead of Harold Zorbin, it was Wilson Terrell who entered the room. Behind him in the hallway were two men in suits, standing tall and silent. "Charlie, Larry," Wilson began. "Do you have a minute?"

Charlie swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up abruptly, his stomach sinking. "Is something wrong?" he asked, his mind suddenly filled with thoughts of his brother. In his nightmares, Megan or David or Colby were the ones to come by if something had happened to Don, but the two men in the hallway were clearly federal agents of one stripe or another.

"Nothing's wrong, we'd just like to ask you a few questions." The taller, sandy-haired man spoke in a deep baritone. "With regards to the investigation of Dominic Koristet."

"You gentlemen are with the FBI?" Larry asked, rising to his feet.

"Homeland Security." The first man removed a badge from his coat pocket and held it up, followed by the shorter, dark-haired man. "We understand Koristet was in possession of your vehicle?"

Charlie looked at Larry, who shrugged. Don hadn't said anything about Homeland Security being involved with this case, but then Don hadn't said much of anything to him since finding out they had ever-so-briefly harbored a fugitive. "That's right, but it was our understanding that the FBI was handling the case."

The shorter man spoke up. "There are a few developments that have caught our attention. The FBI hasn't mentioned our interest in this case?"

"No, not at all," Larry answered while shaking his head.

The two men exchanged a glance, the blond raising an eyebrow. Then he said, "My name is Drew Novak, and this is Michael Valenta. We've seen the report on the incident out on the highway, and the carjacking that occurred here, but there are a few details that we need to clarify, if you can spare the time."

Charlie looked at Larry, who gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Sure, we can do that," he answered, wondering exactly what was in that report they were talking about and how he could describe what had happened without getting the two of them in further trouble.

Wilson excused himself to go back to the main office, and Novak and Valenta entered the room to perch on the wooden chairs next to the desks. Novak had a shock of blond hair that kept falling over his forehead, and he pushed it aside as he said, "Can you tell us what Koristet was carrying when you first saw him?"

"Nothing but the clothes he was wearing," Charlie replied. "Well, that and the gun, but we didn't know about that until later."

"What kind of gun?" Valenta asked. He was regarding them more intently than Novak, and Charlie figured he was supposed to be Bad Cop.

Charlie shook his head slightly and lifted his hands, palms up. "A black one." When the DHS agents exchanged exasperated looks, he went on, "Look, it's not like I know a lot about guns. All I know is that my brother carries a .22, and it wasn't one of those."

"Your brother?" Michael Valenta asked sharply. "He's in law enforcement?"

"Yeah," Charlie answered slowly, lowering his hands to rest on his thighs and looking more closely at the two agents. Their surname was unusual enough that it was bound to register with anyone who had encountered both him and Don within a relatively short time period. "He's the FBI agent in charge of this case. You mean you haven't spoken to him?"

The two men exchanged glances, holding a silent conversation, and Novak spoke first. "We've…had a little difficulty getting a hold of the agent in charge. We didn't realize you were related to him."

"Pure coincidence, as it happens," Larry interjected, rubbing his chin. "May I inquire as to the nature of your interest in this investigation?"

"I'm afraid that's classified," Novak replied smoothly. "I'm sure you understand the importance of keeping matters of national security as confidential as possible."

"We both have fairly high clearance from the consulting work we've done over the years," Charlie retorted. "You might be surprised at how confidential we can be."

"That's good, because we're trusting you not to share this conversation with anyone," Valenta said as he bent forward, leaning his forearms on the tops of his thighs. "Including your brother."

Charlie narrowed his eyes. "He's the agent in charge. Of course we'd be sharing this conversation with him if he asked about it."

Novak took a deep breath. "Mr. Eppes—"

"That's Dr. Eppes, actually," Charlie shot back.

The corner of Drew's mouth quirked up. "Dr. Eppes. Trust us, we will do all of the necessary coordination with our fellow agencies. However, this is a highly sensitive investigation, and the fewer people who know the details, the better. With that in mind, can you tell us anything more about what Koristet was carrying with him?"

"I already told you, he wasn't carrying anything," Charlie replied.

"Except the gun that you didn't notice," Valenta retorted. "Was there anything else that he might have been initially carrying that you didn't see until later?"

He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. "No."

Novak turned to look at Larry. "Dr. Fleinhardt, did you see anything that your colleague might have missed?"

Larry's gaze was focused on the other agent, but he looked over at the sound of his name. "I'm afraid I can offer you no additional information, gentlemen."

"I see." Novak leaned back against the beat-up desk and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "How long was Koristet in here by himself?"

His arms still folded, Charlie looked over at Larry. "What would you say, about four hours in the morning?"

Larry looked up at the ceiling, ticking something off on his fingers. "More like five, I would say."

"And you're confident he was here that entire time?" Novak asked.

"Where else would he go?" Charlie asked, exasperated. These questions weren't getting at anything he hadn't already told Don, and if these two hadn't bothered to contact the head investigator on the case, he wasn't going to waste his time repeating information. "He didn't have keys to any of the vehicles outside, he didn't want anyone to know he was here, and there's nowhere to go on foot besides the freeway. Besides, he was afraid of anyone seeing him."

"Who was he afraid of?" Valenta asked, his dark eyes intent on Charlie.

Charlie shrugged one shoulder. "He never said. Presumably you or the FBI, if he was running from the law."

Valenta gave a thoughtful nod. "But he was here long enough to hide something in this room, or elsewhere in the compound?"

"To hide what?" Larry asked, his brow furrowed.

The look the two agents gave him made it clear they weren't going to answer, and Larry held up his hands in acknowledgment. "All right, but look around you. This is a small room, with spartan furnishings, and neither of us has noticed anything out of the ordinary since young Dominic was here. If he was carrying some contraband, he took it with him when he left."

"So you wouldn't mind if we took a quick look to verify that?"

"Actually, yes, we would." Charlie rose to his feet, pointedly looking at his watch. "We're due at dinner, and we have a very important scientific test to run later this evening. If you gentlemen were to come back with a search warrant, we'd be glad to let you take a look, but until then, I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to leave."

"Charles—" Larry began, but he stopped when Drew Novak abruptly stood up, his six-foot frame filling the space in front of the doorway. "In matters of homeland security, Dr. Eppes, a search warrant is not required if there is an immediate threat to this nation," he said in a low tone.

Charlie stood as tall as he could, keeping his voice firm as he replied, "You've given us no indication that this nation's security is at risk from a simple carjacker. I've read the Patriot Act in its entirety, and I know what rights I still have left. So this interview is over."

Novak's pale blue eyes turned hard as he stared at Charlie. "You may well regret you said that, Dr. Eppes."

He shrugged his shoulders, but didn't move, feeling the weight of the stares of the three other men in the room as he glared back at the DHS agent. Finally, Novak took a step back and relaxed his stance. Only then did Charlie's gaze flicker down to Valenta, and he was astonished to see his right hand resting on his hip, as if he had been about to draw a weapon. The sudden flash of fear he felt must have been visible, for Valenta raised his eyebrows a fraction as if to say, "See?" before he rose to his feet as well. "We'll be in touch," was all he said as he reached for the doorknob. Novak said nothing at all as the two of them swept out of the room.

For the second time in as many days, Charlie found himself dropping down onto the bed with legs that wouldn't quite bear his weight any longer. "Was that all right, Larry?" he asked quietly, raising his head to look at his friend.

Larry was standing there with his hand on top of his head, as if he were trying to prevent his cranium from flying away. "Charles, I have no qualms about the intentions behind your words, although I'm not sure that vexing two agents from the Department of Homeland Security is necessarily a wise career move on top of your current difficulties with your brother."

He waved his hand in the air. "I'm not worried about that," he said, the unspoken "Don will take care of me" lingering in the air, as he hoped that he was right. "It's just…I don't know, something about them didn't feel right. It really bugged me."

"Well, perhaps you've become too accustomed to dealing with federal agents who know you personally and show you a certain amount of deference."

He looked up, startled. "Deference? Do you really think so?"

Larry gave a faint scowl. "I don't mean they think more highly of you than they ought, I mean there's a more equivocal power relation than was just expressed in this room. The FBI gives you information, you give them an analysis. These men were simply taking information, not giving any in return, and a few ruffled feathers are to be expected after such an encounter."

He pursed his lips. "So I should have let them search the room."

"No, now you're putting words in my mouth. I think your actions were entirely appropriate, and I would have done the same had you not spoken first."

"Huh." He thought about it for a moment. "Okay, then, shall we go to dinner?"

Larry extended an arm. "After you, Dr. Eppes."

He quirked up the corner of his mouth as he led the way out of the room. Once they were both in the hallway, he was careful to lock the door behind him and give it a good tug to make sure it was securely shut.

After dinner, before they drove out to the site for the dress rehearsal with the Spirit mock-up, he made a quick excuse and went back to the room just to check the door was locked. And as they went through the test of the rover, giving the commands to the little machine to pick up a rock, slide it as close to its treads as possible, and inch its way forward out of its sand trap, he kept having to divert his mind from thoughts of the door. It was like going on vacation and not remembering if you had unplugged the iron or not, except he could very clearly picture in his mind turning the knob and feeling the door stay firmly in place. Finally, exasperatedly, he told himself to quit worrying and concentrate on what he was doing after one too many comments from Harold Zorbin about his wool-gathering when he was supposed to be working.

The rover prototype worked its way out of its rock-and-a-soft-place conundrum as neatly as could be, and they all heaved a sigh of relief. Tonight, they'd send the final set of commands to JPL, where the scientists in charge of the Mars rover missions would then upload the instructions to Spirit, thirty-five million miles away across the vastness of space. By tomorrow afternoon, they'd know if they were successful, or if the rover was still immobile on the cold, barren surface of Mars. He crossed his fingers as they climbed back in the Jeep for the nighttime trek back to the Desert Studies Center. If this worked, he thought with no small amusement, they'd actually have Dominic Koristet to thank for inspiring the idea that led to the successful solution.

He shared that thought with Larry after they had climbed out of the Jeep and said goodnight to the rest of the team. The physicist gave a small chuckle. "Like a butterfly flapping its wings, indeed. To think of an accused kidnapper being responsible for the insight that enables the further exploration of Mars…the universe is mysterious, my friend."

Charlie opened the door to the dormitory and started inside, Larry close behind. When he approached the door to their room, he stopped in his tracks. "Speaking of mysterious," he said in an undertone, pointing.

The door was ajar. The door that he had double-checked mentally and physically was standing slightly open, the dark room behind sending a silent message that his double-checking had either all been in his head, or was all for naught.

His finger still extended towards the door, he said in a low undertone, "I know that was shut. I know that was locked." He started forward, only to have Larry grab his arm and hiss, "Charles!" He paused with his hand six inches from the door, about to push it open, when he froze at Larry's word. What was he thinking? If the DHS agents had come back with a warrant, he stood a good chance of surprising two armed men at close quarters, which, having observed his brother's quick reflexes on more than one occasion, was a very bad idea.

So he came around to the side of the door closest to the hinges, and slowly, carefully, pushed it open, holding his breath as he did so. Larry peered over his shoulder as the light from the hallway gradually illuminated the room.

It was a disaster zone. He let out his breath sharply as the sight became apparent, and then he took a step forward and snapped on the light. The room was empty of people, but their belongings were strewn about the furniture and onto the floor, with one mattress upended and another slumped half off its frame onto the floor. The desk and dresser drawers were all pulled out, the curtains were askew, and the chairs were lying on the floor, half-covered with clothing and papers.

He exchanged a shocked look with Larry, whose palms were covering his cheeks as his mouth formed a perfect "O." The physicist shook his head back and forth. "This is not acceptable, Charlie. This is not acceptable at all."

Charlie grimly turned on his heel and marched away, towards the main office and the telephone. He was going to get some answers, from DHS or from Don or from whoever else could tell him who those men were and why they had committed breaking-and-entering and carried out an illegal search of their room. Something was going on here, something more than an attempted kidnapping and carjacking, and now he was determined to find out what it was.


End file.
